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THE PHILOSOPHY OF BERGSON 



THE PHILOSOPHY 
OF BERGSON 



BY 

AV D. LINDSAY 

FELLOW AND TUTOR OF BALLIOL COLLEGE, OXFORD 




IQII 



J. M. DENT & SONS, LTD. 

BEDFORD STREET, STRAND, W.C. 



V\ 6 



*>£\ 



/i>j/ Edition^ June 191 1 
Reprinted November 191 1 



.4// ri^fr reserved 



PREFACE 

Some apology is needed for publishing a book on 
the philosophy of Bergson. Books on philosophers 
are always a poor substitute for the writings of the 
philosophers themselves, and that is especially true 
of a writer so brilliant as Monsieur Bergson. My 
excuse is that in some degree the very brilliance and 
charm of Monsieur Bergson's writing has hindered a 
proper appreciation of his work. His method of 
philosophical exposition is a combination of ab- 
stract thinking and most illuminating and suggestive 
concrete illustrations. The combination constitutes, 
I think, an ideal method, but, as few professional 
philosophers since Plato have had the artist's power 
of concrete vision, an unusual one. In consequence 
the suggestiveness of the illustrations has obscured 
the systematic nature of the thought which they 
illustrate, and Bergson has, in spite of his explana- 
tions and protests, too often been regarded by his 



vi PREFACE 

admirers as a philosopher who does not believe in 
systematic thinking and by his critics as a writer 
remarkable indeed for some brilliant apergus but 
not to be taken seriously as a philosopher. I have 
therefore endeavoured to bring out the unity and 
systematic nature of Monsieur Bergson's thought, 
and to show something of its connection with the 
historical development of philosophy, and more 
especially with the philosophy of Kant. The 
book does not pretend to be an account of all 
Monsieur Bergson's work. There are many things 
in his writings which I have not discussed, notably 
his contribution to aesthetics in he Rire and ^his 
more special psychological studies, such as Le Reve, 
U Effort Intellectuel, and Le Souvenir du Present 
et la Fausse Reconnaissance. Further, as I have 
wished to examine certain problems with which 
modern philosophy is especially concerned in the 
light which Monsieur Bergson throws upon them, 
rather than to make a critical study of his writings 
in great detail, I have not been careful to distinguish 
when I am merely giving a resume of what Monsieur 
Bergson says and when the arguments are my own. 



PREFACE vii 

For the same reason I have ventured to criticise the 
details of Monsieur Bergson's arguments when they 
seemed to me to obscure what I take to be the main 
results of his thinking. 

As a justification of my attempt to reduce to 
more technical terms and to connect with previous 
philosophy, writing so fresh and original I would 
quote Monsieur Bergson's own words : — 

" La philosophic, dans ses plus profondes analyses 
et dans ses plus hautes syntheses, est obligee de 
parler la langue de tout le monde. De la une 
illusion assez repandue, qui consiste a croire qu'on 
peut aborder d'emblee l'ceuvre d'un philosophe 
contemporain, y entrer de plain pied et la refuter 
au pied leve, trancher les problemes qu'elle pose ou 
les ecarter comme autant de futilites, sans tenir 
compte des vingt cinq siecles de meditation, 
d'inquietude et d'effort qui sont comme condenses 
dans la forme actuelle de ces problemes et jusque 
dans les termes dont nous nous servons pour les 



enoncer." 1 



For convenience I have cited the pages in the 
English translation of Les Donnees Immediates de la 

1 Revue de Mitaphysique et de Morale, vol. xvi. p. 32. 



viii PREFACE 

Conscience, Matiere et Memoire, and V Evolution 
Creatrice, and have referred to these books by their 
English titles and in most cases quoted from the 
translation. As the Introduction a la Metaphysique 
which appeared in the Revue de Metaphysique et de 
Morale, January 1903, is now out of print and 
almost inaccessible in French, I have in referring to 
it cited the pages of the German translation. 

The book contains the substance of lectures 
which I delivered at Balliol as Jowett Lecturer, and 
I have not been careful to remove all traces of their 
original form, nor to change their original character, 
of an endeavour rather to help myself and possibly 
others to understand the main lines of Monsieur 
Bergson's thought than to appraise its value or to 
attempt a complete and critical answer to the 
questions which it raises. 

A. D. LINDSAY 

April 191 1 



CONTENTS 



CHAPTER I 

PAGE 

Introduction i 



CHAPTER II 
Exposition of Antinomies 46 

CHAPTER III 
Space, Time, and Motion 114 

CHAPTER IV 
Matter and Memory 156 

CHAPTER V 
Intelligence and Intuition 212 



THE PHILOSOPHY OF BERGSON 

CHAPTER I 

INTRODUCTION 

In a passage of the Critique of Pure Reason Kant 
remarks that " It is a great and essential proof of 
cleverness or insight to know how to ask reason- 
able questions." Many difficulties and antinomies 
in philosophy arise, he held, from a failure to ask 
the right question, or from asking questions which 
have really no meaning. In face of antinomies thus 
created, the chief part of the philosopher's task is 
his statement of the problem, and he may be 
judged to have succeeded if in his new statement 
he brings together the elements of importance in 
the old problems. Yet this is bound at first to 
have the result that the new philosophy will be 
hard to classify : it will not fit into any of the 
old schools ; it may seem to be a mere confused 
jumble of inconsistent doctrines, a comprehensive 



2 THE PHILOSOPHY OF BERGSON 

eclecticism ; and if we go to it with the old 
questions, we may get what seem unsatisfactory or 
inconsistent answers. The new philosophy will 
win its way only if through its help the anti- 
nomies of the older are exposed and resolved. 

Kant's own philosophy made an advance of this 
kind. He began, as we know from his corre- 
spondence, with a consciousness of antinomies. He 
was convinced of the truth of certain elements 
both in English Empiricism and Continental 
Rationalism, as he was convinced of the unsatis- 
factoriness of either of these doctrines taken by 
itself. The Critical Philosophy began when, from 
a study of these antinomies, he came to formulate 
a new problem. A great part of the advance 
in philosophy made by the Critique consisted in 
the perception of the problem involved in synthetic 
a priori judgments ; and while there are differences 
of opinion as to the success with which Kant 
solved the problem which he stated, almost every 
one is agreed that its mere statement marked an 
epoch in philosophy. 

Now, without suggesting any comparison in 
importance between Bergson and Kant, there is this 
resemblance between them, that much of the interest 
of Bergson's work consists in his statement and 



INTRODUCTION 3 

exposition of antinomies to be found in present-day 
philosophy, that as the best road to the solution 
of these antinomies he offers a new statement of 
the task or problem of philosophy, and propounds 
a new method. Like Kant's, his work professes 
to be critical : to find the main source of previous 
difficulties in an uncriticised assumption. This new 
statement of problems has the natural result that 
he will fit in to none of the ordinary categories 
of philosophical schools. He has been called a 
Pragmatist ; and much of his work consists in 
insisting on the influence of practical considerations 
on thought, both ordinary and scientific, and in 
detecting that influence just where its presence had 
been least suspected. Yet at the same time he 
believes in the power of thought to transcend this 
influence, and insists that philosophy is only pos- 
sible if the distinction between thought and action, 
which Pragmatism tends to deny, is clearly recog- 
nised. Much of his work in Matter and Memory 
is devoted to showing mind's independence of 
body : he pushes to great lengths the notion that 
mind is more intelligible than matter, that the 
truest and most metaphysical apprehension of 
reality must be in forms of mind. Yet he is not 
an idealist in the ordinary sense. No one has 



4 THE PHILOSOPHY OF BERGSON 

stated more trenchantly the externality of percep- 
tion. He brings together in Matter and Memory 
arguments with which we are familiar in modern 
Realism. But his realism is such as to allow, and 
indeed perhaps sometimes unduly to insist upon, 
the subjectivity of much of our thinking. Much 
of his work is psychological. The first chapter 
of Time and Free Will is an inquiry as to how 
we come to attribute intensity to our psychical 
states — a purely psychological inquiry. Matter 
and Memory is largely concerned with the results 
of specific researches into the relations of brain 
and mind ; and Bergson believes that these results 
may be of real importance in a philosophical 
account of the relations of mind and body ; not 
as providing a theory, but as proving that the 
philosophical theory will explain the detailed facts. 
Yet, at the same time, his work, especially in 
Time and Free Will and in the essay on Psycho- 
physiological Parallelism, is a criticism of the 
foundation and assumptions of most psychology, a 
criticism which leads to the view that psychology 
is only possible when it follows the reflective 
method of philosophy. 

Bergson, then, is not easy to classify. If we 
were, in the manner of some writers, to ask 



INTRODUCTION 5 

what propositions he holds to be true, we might 
produce a list showing that Bergson agrees in 
some proposition with the most various and strictly 
opposed philosophers. Yet he is not to be styled 
an Eclectic. For he claims at least that all these 
propositions, hitherto supposed to be incompatible, 
will be seen to involve one another in the light of 
his new statement of the problem of philosophy. 
It is not because he is sometimes an Idealist, 
and sometimes a Realist that he agrees with some 
of the statements of the first school and with 
some of the second. He does not sometimes 
think that presentations are inside consciousness, 
and sometimes that they are outside ; rather he has 
shown that the question whether objects are inside 
or outside the mind (which has divided Idealism 
and Realism) is really unmeaning, and has suggested 
that the problem of the relation between mind 
and its objects should be stated in terms not of 
space but of time. 

Bergson thus resembles Kant in this, that his 
work springs from a consideration of antinomies 
and a conviction that they can be resolved only 
by approaching problems by a new method or 
from a new point of view. Whatever, therefore, 
we may think of his success in providing a solu- 



6 THE PHILOSOPHY OF BERGSON 

tion, a study of his work cannot fail to be 
instructive in so far as it will be a study of 
tendencies in modern philosophy. For that reason 
I propose to devote attention to Bergson's ex- 
position of antinomies, to his critical rather than 
to his constructive and positive work. There can, 
I think, be little doubt as to the great value of 
the first. The value of the second is much more 
difficult to appraise. 

But there is another and more interesting aspect 
in which Bergson resembles Kant, and can at the 
same time be contrasted with him, viz. in respect 
to his view of the relations between philosophy 
and science. Kant's whole work is dominated by 
his conception of science. The Critique begins with 
a contrast between the assured and certain results 
of science and the uncertainty and confusion of 
existing metaphysic. The Critique is both a criti- 
cism of metaphysics and a validation of science. 
It establishes or seeks to establish the conditions 
on which the success of science depends. His 
analysis of the Critique is entitled Prolegomena 
to any future metaphysic which can pretend to be 
scientific; and he got his notion of what " being 
scientific " involved from his knowledge of the 
most progressive sciences of his time, mathematics 



INTRODUCTION 7 

and mathematical physics. His philosophy pre- 
supposed though it criticised science. He was 
himself both scientist and philosopher. 

Since Kant's time the enormous growth of the 
sciences and the increasing specialisation of all in- 
tellectual work has caused a divorce between philo- 
sophy and science. It has been increasingly hard 
for the philosopher to take anything like a synoptic 
view of the results and methods of scientific inquiry. 
Philosophy has less and less held it to be its concern 
to survey reality as presented in the sciences, and, 
from a more comprehensive view than that of any 
one of them, display the whole of which they are 
parts. Sometimes it has essayed to comprehend 
reality independently of the detailed results of 
the sciences, contenting itself with knowing that 
science, because abstract, must be wrong, and not 
always realising that a proud independence of matter 
of fact may be as abstract. This produces an irri- 
tating encounter with the scientist who has found 
that his science raises philosophical problems. The 
scientist knows that philosophy cannot do his work 
over again without his patient study of detail, 
and fails to see how the philosopher can criticise his 
results unless he to some extent studies and accepts 
them. Perhaps more often philosophy tries to 



8 THE PHILOSOPHY OF BERGSON 

become scientific by limiting itself, finding some 
special region of facts which only philosophy can 
explore, in the hope, expressed or implicit, that a 
conquest of that region may bring with it a mastery 
of all the field of knowledge. This explains the 
excessive preoccupation of philosophy with theory 
of knowledge — an inquiry which, when it is treated 
in entire isolation from what is known, is bound 
to be barren and apt to become subjective. It 
accounts for the impossible view often taken of 
psychology, that it is a special inquiry to be studied 
scientifically, which is to have all the rigour and 
certainty of the most rigid science, and yet is to 
contain within itself the explanation of many, if 
not all, the problems with which the other special 
sciences deal. 

But philosophy can neither be an isolated science 
nor isolated from all science. It cannot be its busi- 
ness to do over again the work of the sciences, 
to check and correct their investigations, yet it 
cannot exist apart from science. If it does not 
study any particular facts, it at least studies scien- 
tific investigation, and reflects upon the results and 
methods of science. 

In spite of any formal separation between science 
and philosophy there is no doubt that philosophy 



INTRODUCTION 9 

is affected by progress in science, that the different 
problems with which philosophy is concerned from 
time to time are largely suggested by the different 
stages of scientific inquiry or the different natures 
of the sciences which are for the time the most 
important. It is a commonplace that not only was 
the development of modern philosophy, which 
began with Descartes and culminated with Kant, 
coincident with the development of modern mathe- 
matics and the enormous progress made by such 
sciences as physics and mathematical astronomy, but 
its methods and aims were largely influenced by the 
methods and aims of the mathematical sciences. It 
is as universally recognised that many of the most 
important of present-day problems in philosophy 
are raised by the remarkable growth of the 
biological sciences since Kant's time. These are 
problems found within the sciences ; they concern 
the whole question of the applicability of the 
mathematical method to the facts of life. The 
difficulties of the biological sciences have therefore 
raised what is eminently a philosophical problem, 
the solution of which will be at least assisted by, if 
it does not necessitate a knowledge of, the detailed 
form in which the problem presents itself in the 
sciences themselves. 



io THE PHILOSOPHY OF BERGSON 

Kant, when he spoke of science, meant mathe- 
matical science. He even goes so far as to say 
that an inquiry is scientific just in so far as it is 
mathematical. The main heads of his Prolegomena 
to any future metaphysic which may pretend to he 
scientific were, therefore, naturally : " How is pure 
mathematics possible ? How is pure science of 
nature (by which he meant physics) possible? and 
how is pure metaphysic possible ? " He answered 
the first two questions in terms which precluded 
the possibility of metaphysics. The growth of the 
biological sciences suggests the further question, or 
perhaps questions, How is biology possible ? and 
how is psychology possible ? and raises the possi- 
bility that these questions may be so answered as 
to suggest how metaphysics is possible. Bergson, 
in bringing philosophy back into close contact with 
science, is continuing the questions of the Prolego- 
mena in this sense. He has himself stated this very 
clearly : * " This method claims to escape from the 
objections which Kant has formulated against meta- 
physic in general, and its principal object is to 
remove the opposition established by Kant between 
metaphysic and science, by taking account of the 

1 Discussion on u Le parallelisme psychophysique et la metaphysique 
positive," Bulletiti de la Sociiti Fran$aise de Philosophic, June 1901. 



INTRODUCTION 1 1 

quite new conditions in which science works. If 
you read the Critique of Pure Reason you see that 
Kant has criticised, not reason in general, but a 
reason fashioned to the habits and exigencies of the 
Cartesian mechanism or the Newtonian physic. . . . 
The doctrine that I defend proposes to rebuild the 
bridge (broken down since Kant) between meta- 
physics and science. This divorce between science 
and metaphysics is the great evil from which our 
philosophy suffers. We are fond of saying that the 
faults are on the side of the scientists. Let us ask our- 
selves if we have not, too, some reason to reproach 
ourselves. Let us ask whether our metaphysic 
cannot be reconciled with science simply because it 
lags behind science, being the metaphysic of a rigid 
science with entirely mathematical categories, in 
short of the science that flourished from Descartes 
to Kant, while the science of the nineteenth century 
seems to have aspired to a much more subtle form, 
and not always to have taken mathematics as its 
model." 

We may regard Bergson as completing rather 
than opposing Kant's work, inasmuch as his criticism 
of the attempt to make all science mathematical or 
to construct a universal mathematic is, like Kant's 
criticism, a delimitation of the sphere of mathe- 



12 THE PHILOSOPHY OF BERGSON 

matics rather than a denial of their validity within 
their own sphere. Hence, as Kant claims, such 
criticism is equally removed from dogmatism and 
scepticism : from the dogmatic determinism which 
asserts the theoretical possibility of expressing ail 
reality in terms of mathematical necessity, and the 
scepticism, expressed e.g. in Mr. H. G. Wells's 
Scepticism, of the Instrument, which sees in the failure 
of mathematics to apply to all the details of reality 
a proof that mathematical laws may themselves be 
false. 

We take it, then, that Bergson's work is pri- 
marily an attempt to examine the assumptions of 
the biological and non-mathematical sciences, and 
to discover whether there are not certain inquiries 
which are not mathematical but which nevertheless 
give us knowledge, and in the light of such in- 
quiries to renew the question of the Prolegomena, 
How is metaphysic possible ? 

It may be useful to notice how far Bergson is 
here giving more special attention to a problem 
already raised though not satisfactorily solved by 
Kant. Kant denied the possibility of metaphysics, 
because metaphysics could not fulfil the conditions 
of the mathematical sciences. Yet while the mathe- 
matical sciences are, in Kant's eyes, the only strict 



INTRODUCTION 13 

sciences, he recognised the existence of certain 
inquiries which were not capable of an a priori 
treatment, and in the third Critique he examines 
not the a priori constitutive principles, but the 
postulates of empirical inquiry. In the Critique of 
Teleological Judgement he definitely asserts the limi- 
tations of the mathematical or mechanical method, 
and sets by its side the teleological ; and in that 
Critique he is largely concerned with the problems 
already raised in biology, and he considers that 
this Critique mediates between the first and the 
second, i.e. between the principles of the mathe- 
matical sciences and the metaphysical concepts 
which are implied in conduct. 

Kant considered himself to have established the 
validity of the mathematical sciences by showing that 
they are confined to phenomena and do not apply 
to things in themselves. This distinction is open to 
the interpretation, which has perhaps usually been 
put upon it, that the a priori sciences are possible 
because in them the mind is in contact with realities 
or things which are somehow constructed by the 
mind, and which as actual entities must be dis- 
tinguished from the things in themselves which 
exist unknowable behind them. This interpretation 
has naturally led to a doctrine of the relativity of 



1 4 THE PHILOSOPHY OF BERGSON 

knowledge, against which we shall find Bergson 
protesting, and even, in spite of Kant's repeated 
protests, to the view that the mind has somehow 
superior knowledge of its own states. Under such 
an interpretation the validity of the mathematical 
sciences which the Critique establishes is not worth 
much. 

But if we examine the actual arguments either 
in the Deduction or the Schematism of the Cate- 
gories, we find that Kant is concerned, not with 
the soundness of mathematical reasoning, but with 
the validity of its application to reality as presented 
in perception ; that that depends on the principle 
that mathematics involves synthesis of the homo- 
geneous ; and that in mathematical synthesis we 
are synthesizing discrete elements whose discreteness 
is the work of the understanding. This is seen 
more especially in the part played by time in the 
Schematism of the Categories. Time is regarded 
by Kant as a homogeneous order, the relations of 
whose parts can be anticipated just because time 
is homogeneous, and the principles involved in such 
a homogeneous order can be applied to reality in 
so far as real things appear in time. When Kant 
comes to treat of causation, he finds the difficulty 
that causation is synthesis of the heterogeneous and 



INTRODUCTION 15 

hence cannot be anticipated. His solution is that 
there can be an a priori principle of causation only 
in so far as things can be regarded as points in 
the time series. Causation is the relation, in a 
continuous change, between one point taken by us 
and another point also taken by us. We have 
made the discretion, and hence the synthesis is of 
a series the points in which are of our distinguishing. 
Hence, when Kant says that the principles of the 
mathematical sciences are valid only of phenomena, 
that means at least that they are valid of reality 
in its spatial and temporal relations, space and 
time being regarded as wholes which we articulate. 
We can have an a priori law of causation because 
causation is a time relation. But particular laws 
of causation are not derivable from the general 
nature of time, but from a study of real events that 
occur in time. Therefore, as Kant insists in the 
Critique of Judgement, they cannot be anticipated, 
but must be studied empirically. In that Critique 
he examines the principles governing empirical in- 
vestigation and distinguishes the two principles of 
mechanism and teleology, both of which he asserts 
to be necessary to science without being able to 
explain their relation. The concept of teleology is 
necessary in science in so far as we have to recog- 



1 6 THE PHILOSOPHY OF BERGSON 

nise in empirical investigation the individuality and 
distinct nature of different things, but it is a concept 
with no relation to Kant's a priori principles of the 
understanding. Its importance lies in the implication 
that while the principles of the understanding are 
valid only of phenomena, of a synthesis of points 
which we have distinguished, empirical knowledge 
demands some apprehension of the real articulation 
and individuality of things, though the method and 
principles of such apprehension are unexplained. 

Kant also applies his distinction of phenomena 
and thing in itself to the self, and asserts that 
the self can only be known phenomenally : which 
means, in so far as it can be regarded as a series of 
discrete states, acting, as the Critique of Practical 
Reason shows Kant to have thought, externally upon 
one another according to the principle of causation. 

Kant's doctrine that we only know phenomena, 
and his statement that an inquiry is only scientific 
in so far as it is mathematical, are thus two ways 
of saying the same thing : that we can only know 
objects, whether physical or psychical, in so far as 
they can be regarded as discrete external points in 
a time series. Following this principle science has 
endeavoured to construct a scientific psychology and 
a scientific biology, whose main assumption is that 



INTRODUCTION 17 

their objects can be treated as so discrete : that we 
can regard the mind as an aggregate or series of 
states, and animal life as an aggregate or series of 
mechanical changes. 

Bergson's examination of the antinomies created 
by this assumption results in showing that a scientific 
psychology and a scientific biology are not possible 
if scientific is to be taken to mean mathematical. 
But this result raises the further question, Are such 
inquiries of no value because they are not mathe- 
matical ? Do they or should they want to be so ? 
Have they no standards or methods of their own ? 
This leads to a consideration of those elements in 
knowledge which are not represented in mathe- 
matical analysis ; and to Bergson's account of in- 
tuition. The question, How are psychology and 
biology possible ? is answered thus : Only because 
knowledge is not exhausted in mathematical analysis, 
because over against the discursive understanding 
stands the more immediate intuitive knowledge. 

As, then, the examination of the possibility of 
the mathematical sciences led in Kant to a critique 
of the understanding, the examination of the possi- 
bility of the biological sciences leads in Bergson to 
a critique of intuition. It is here that we have 
perhaps the chief interest and difficulty of his work. 



1 8 THE PHILOSOPHY OF BERGSON 

Criticism of the discursive understanding is not 
new, and we are all familiar with views which 
depreciate the scientific understanding at the expense 
of something more immediate and profound, some- 
thing more akin to feeling. Hume's scepticism, for 
example, is an attack on reason in favour of feeling, 
and feeling which is thus exalted is something 
which has no standard and no methods, whose only 
test is subjective and momentary. The discursive 
understanding is examined and found wanting, but 
the feeling or intuition set up in its place is not 
found wanting simply because it is not examined. 
It is therefore of great importance that the criti- 
cism of the limits of mathematical thinking is in 
Bergson made in the name of science. For the 
existence of inquiries such as biology and psycho- 
logy, and (we would add, though Bergson un- 
fortunately does not do so) as history, may show 
us that non-mathematical inquiries have their own 
standards, their good and bad methods, though they 
may not be accessible to just the same kinds of 
test and verification as are the mathematical sciences. 
Thus Bergson himself does not attack the sciences 
in the name of immediate feeling, though some of 
his followers may do so. Intuition is for him not 
a method practised by turning away from the results 



INTRODUCTION 19 

of the sciences, but by somehow completing them. 
His doctrine of intuition is, as we have seen, an 
attempt to rebuild the bridge between science and 
metaphysic. He says in the conversation from 
which we have already quoted : " If by mysticism 
be meant (as it almost always is nowadays) a re- 
action against positive science, the doctrine which 
I defend is in the end only a protest against 
mysticism." M. Le Roy, his interlocutor, suggests 
that the true opposition is between intellectual 
thought and thought lived, to which Bergson 
replies : " That is still intellectualism, in my 
opinion. But you are quite right to distinguish 
between thought drawn from its profound sources 
and superficial thought, which is ready to fix itself 
in formulas. Automatism is the enemy. That is 
true of the intellectual life, as of the physical 
and moral life." " There are two kinds of intel- 
lectualism, the true, which lives its ideas ; and a 
false intellectualism, which immobilises moving 
ideas into solidified concepts to play with them 
like counters." * We are, then, to have the criti- 
cism of an intuition which is distinguished equally 
from the discursive understanding and from mere 
feeling. 

1 Bulletin de le Sociiti Franpaise de Philosophies vol. i. p. 64. 



20 THE PHILOSOPHY OF BERGSON 

We suggested that the answer to the new 
question, How are the biological sciences possible ? 
might raise afresh the question as to the possibility 
of metaphysics, answered in the negative by Kant. 
Here again let us see where Kant left the problem. 
Metaphysics implies knowledge of the absolute or 
of things in themselves : but for Kant all know- 
ledge is mathematical knowledge, and as that is 
only of phenomena, metaphysics is impossible. 
But, as he said, Kant limited reason to make room 
for faith, and the metaphysical concepts of God, 
Freedom, and Immortality, though they could not 
be known, could be lived. This results in his 
remarkable account of freedom. On the one hand 
we have the phenomenal self regarded as a series of 
external states influencing one another by mechanical 
laws, in such a way that were these fully known, 
they could be fully determined beforehand : on the 
other hand the self as moral agent, a responsible 
individual standing in relation to other responsible 
individuals, and whose actions are therefore free. 
The difficulties in ethics into which this distinction 
led Kant are well known. Just because the pheno- 
menal self can only be known in so far as it is 
regarded as a series of discrete states governed by 
the law of causation, it can only be known as in its 



INTRODUCTION 21 

place in the phenomenal world regarded as a similar 
but larger series. Therefore, if there be any known 
relation between a particular state of mind and a 
particular change in the outside world, or vice versa, 
the relation must be that of necessary causation. 
In other words, as phenomenon the individual loses 
his individuality. We may make the attempt to 
separate a psychological series from a physical series 
(we shall find Bergson examining attempts of this 
kind), but in the end, once we regard the self as 
a series of separate discrete states, we can no longer 
maintain the distinction between that series and 
other similar causal series. Kant's answer to this 
difficulty is that causation only holds of the self as 
phenomenal, and it is more than phenomenal. 
Treatment of the self as a series of discrete states 
is then, according to Kant, inadequate. We escape 
from causation only in so far as we can regard the 
self as individual, and since we can never know 
anything as individual, freedom can never be known. 
We get free action only in so far as we realise the 
self as acting from motives that stand in no relation 
to other things at all, in moral praise or blame that 
takes no account of circumstance. It follows that 
for Kant there can be no degrees of freedom : or at 
least if there are they cannot be known. For, it is 



22 THE PHILOSOPHY OF BERGSON 

important to recognise, freedom is a question of 
individuality, and for Kant in the Critique of 
Practical Reason there is no third alternative to 
knowing the self as a series of states in causal re- 
lations with the rest of reality, a mere nexus of 
changes, hardly even a nexus, and realising the self 
as acting under the moral claim to behave as an 
independent moral agent responsible to other in- 
dependent moral agents. 

Now, the real difficulty as to knowledge of phe- 
nomena, according to the interpretation we have 
suggested, is that the separations and discretions 
taken in reality are the work of the mind : things are 
regarded for mathematics as occupying points in a 
homogeneous space. The number of points between 
which we may choose in seeking a starting-point 
in any investigation is infinite : there is no point 
we must take. We know change by taking points 
in a homogeneous time series. But just because 
continuous change is not really a series of moments, 
or the surface of objects in space a series of 
points, our moments or points on which our 
applied mathematical inquiries are based have no 
necessary relation to the real articulation of things, 
This will be clear if we ask of Kant the question. 
How many things in themselves are there, or is 



INTRODUCTION 23 

there any way of knowing that there is more than 
one? Now we shall find Bergson insisting on the 
disparateness between the divisions we may make 
in reality in the application of mathematical methods 
and the real articulation of things, and pointing out 
that just because for mathematics, i.e. for the theo- 
retical side, it does not matter what point we select 
for our axis of co-ordination, the question is really 
decided by practical considerations ; and that it may 
sometimes be and sometimes not be convenient " to 
carve reality at the joints." If, then, the mathe- 
matical sciences tell us nothing about the individu- 
ality of things, and if they comprise all knowledge, 
there can be no knowledge of freedom and no 
knowledge of degrees of freedom. Hence the sharp 
separation in Kant between freedom and causation. 

It is significant that Kant regarded the third 
Critique as mediating between the first and the 
second particularly in regard to the question of 
freedom, and further that he regarded the concept 
of purposiveness or organism as one forced upon 
science by the empirical observation of living things. 
That is, he held that living things were of such 
a nature that it was evident that they must be 
regarded as wholes which explained themselves, or 
which at least could not be fully explained from 



24 THE PHILOSOPHY OF BERGSON 

their external relations alone. That implies that 
there are certain objects which empirical observa- 
tion assures us have more claim to be treated as 
individuals than others. Further, Kant discusses 
the possibility of viewing the relations of such 
living things to one another on the analogy of 
the mutual relations of the parts of any one of 
them. For while living things must be treated as 
individuals, they are also obviously in relation to 
other individuals ; and it seems, at first sight at 
any rate, as though such relations, the relations of 
individuals of the same species or of different 
species to one another, were not stateable in terms 
of mathematical causation. The concept of pur- 
posiveness which the investigation of living things 
requires was not analysed by Kant. Rather he 
accepted it as exemplified in conscious will. For 
that very reason he held that, though required in 
biology, it was inadequate to the facts. But 
characteristically enough this did not make him 
seek to obtain a more adequate concept, rather he 
contented himself with limiting its application, and 
calling it subjective. Further, Kant held that the 
application of the concept of purposiveness did not 
prejudice the application of mechanical categories : 
rather he held that an organism could only be pro- 



INTRODUCTION 25 

perly understood when its changes were expressed 
in terms both of purposiveness and of mechanism, 
although he regarded this co-ordination of two such 
different categories as a difficulty not capable of 
resolution. 

Now the importance of this line of thought 
becomes clearer when it is observed that in bio- 
logy at least certain things have on examination 
to be treated as individuals, or at least as having 
a degree of individuality, if they are to be under- 
stood. And such division is quite different from 
the divisions of the mathematical sciences. The 
mathematical or geometrical relation will hold 
wherever in the surface of an object the starting- 
point of the inquiry is taken : the starting- 
point is of no theoretical, though it may be of 
great practical, importance. With living things 
theoretical explanation, understanding of the re- 
lations themselves, depends essentially on the 
proper delimitation of the object's individuality. A 
tool which I hold in my hand may be nearer the 
centre of gravity of my body than the tip of an 
elephant's trunk is near the centre of gravity of 
the elephant's body ; but I should be making a 
ludicrous mistake if I thought that for that reason 
the tool was more a part of me than the trunk a 



26 THE PHILOSOPHY OF BERGSON 

part of the elephant. The study of living things 
thus implies the possibility of determining on 
empirical observation the real articulation of things. 
This point is brought out in a conversation between 
Bergson and Couturat quoted in the Bulletin de la 
Societe Fran$aise de Philosopkie, June 1901. The 
passage is worth quoting at length. Bergson, after 
contrasting physics with the biological sciences, says, 
" As we rise from the inorganic to the organic, we 
find ourselves in the presence of facts more objec- 
tively willed as facts by nature herself. A living 
being is nearly a closed circle, closed by nature. 
A physiological function is a whole relatively closed. 
The exercise of that function is in its turn a well- 
defined fact, in spite of its complexity, or rather 
because of that very complexity, where so much 
unity is revealed. When finally we come to the 
elementary psychological fact which borders on the 
cerebral fact, then we have something defined, iso- 
lated, and perfectly distinguished in consciousness." 

M. Couturat. — " I am surprised that M. Bergson 
thinks a physiological fact better delineated than a 
physical. What could be better defined than an 
eclipse or more complex and confused than a physio- 
logical fact, implying as it often does the whole 
organism ? " 



INTRODUCTION 27 

M. Bergson. — " It is not a fact's simplicity which 
guarantees its real individuality. That simplicity 
may, on the contrary, in some cases at least, be the 
sign that the fact has been artificially cut off or 
constructed by us : while an indefinite complexity 
like that of a physiological fact, if all its elements are 
obviously co-ordinated with one another, reveals an 
objective unity and possesses a real individuality." 

Further, if living organisms are more really 
separate and individual than points in space or 
portions of inorganic matter, their divisions and 
articulations are at the same time not so sharp and 
trenchant as mathematical divisions. Their parts 
are not really external to one another, but are them- 
selves also organic, and have a claim to be regarded 
as individuals ; and the individuals in turn, as we 
have seen, have to be regarded as similarly organic 
parts of other wholes. Further, inasmuch as the 
relation between the parts of an organic whole can 
only be apprehended in the parts themselves, the 
individuality of any organic whole will depend on 
the particular nature of the parts, and can only be 
known empirically. 

Hence we come to see that empirical observation 
presents us with different degrees of individuality : 
that some things are more truly individuals than 



28 THE PHILOSOPHY OF BERGSON 

others. And in place of the two extremes of 
the moral individual, viewed in isolation from 
his circumstances and standing in relation only to 
other similar moral individuals, and the links 
in the causal chain whose individuality is entirely 
artificial and arbitrary, we are presented with an 
indefinite number of degrees of individuality. In- 
dividuality is known and can be recognised empiri- 
cally in the biological sciences, and we may expect 
to find certain features characteristic of individuality 
growing in importance and developing as we rise 
from the lowest stages to the highest. Further, 
if individuality and freedom imply one another, the 
concept of freedom, instead of being a mere ideal 
of reason, not knowable or demonstrable, may be 
seen to be of real importance and validity in the 
sciences of life. The forms of life may be viewed as 
exhibiting freedom and individuality in progressive 
stages. 

It is this use of the concept of freedom which 
is most characteristic of Bergson's account of evolu- 
tion as of conduct, and it depends on the possibility 
of treating freedom, not as something of which we 
may be intuitively certain but can have no know- 
ledge, but as a genuine concept which may be 
empirically recognised, and in virtue of which the 



INTRODUCTION 29 

gradual progress from the lowest forms of life to the 
most complex forms of human thought and action 
may be better understood. Just because freedom 
can be recognised empirically, the relation of human 
life to other forms of life can only be understood 
by empirical investigation, and there may be a real 
relation between the biological sciences studied in 
this sense and what are ordinarily called the specu- 
lative sciences. The theory of life may have some 
real importance for the theory of knowledge. 

In some such way, I think, we find an explana- 
tion of that characteristic of Creative Evolution, or 
indeed of much of Bergson's work — his argument 
that the facts of scientific inquiries, such as those 
made by the physiologist and the biologist, not to 
speak of the psychologist, are of real importance 
to the metaphysician. It is an attitude which is 
naturally viewed with distrust by those who are 
accustomed to find that an attempt to apply biology 
or physiology or psychology to the theory of know- 
ledge, usually means, or assumes, that in this way 
a theory of knowledge, or life, or conduct, can be 
given in which the uniqueness of the objects of 
metaphysics is explained away, and that life can be 
stated in terms of mathematical relations of the in- 
organic, conscious conduct in terms of unconscious, 



3 o THE PHILOSOPHY OF BERGSON 

knowledge in terms of physical relations. But the 
scientist or evolutionist who has so applied his 
science to philosophy has been under the mathe- 
matical conception of a science, and has taken for 
granted that to give a theory of anything means 
expressing it in terms of something external to 
it. On these lines a theory of knowledge must 
be something which really explains knowledge away 
and ignores its uniqueness, and therefore in this sense 
there can be no theory of knowledge. But the 
situation is changed if we find that the sciences of 
life have to recognise the individuality and unique- 
ness of their objects ; that they are dealing with 
things as individuals which are in a sense their own 
explanation, and which are better understood when 
seen in relation to other individuals : that just as 
the parts of an organism are distinct and unique 
and not stateable in terms of each other, and yet 
the organism is only understood by exhibiting the 
relation of its parts to one another, so if the 
different organisms stand in organic relation with 
one another, each of them will be understood 
better when exhibited as part of a larger whole, and 
an understanding of the other parts will contribute 
to an understanding of any one part ; though 
knowledge of these others does not render un- 



INTRODUCTION 31 

necessary observation of and reflection on the one 
particular part. 

So finally, if all living beings stand in some 
relation to one another, and if man's thought and 
conscious purposes have any relation to his bodily 
functionings, and these have relation to the function- 
ing of simpler forms of life, while we must reject 
any theory which denies the uniqueness of know- 
ledge and conscious purpose, we may at the same 
time recognise that the comprehension and study of 
other forms of life will help to the comprehension 
of knowledge. It will not make it any the less 
necessary for philosophy to do its own task. We 
can only understand knowledge by reflecting upon it : 
but our reflection upon it may be helped if we study 
it as one among other forms of life. Hence the 
connection which Bergson asserts between the theory 
of life and the theory of knowledge. " The theory 
of knowledge and the theory of life seem to us in- 
separable. A theory of life that is not accompanied 
by a criticism of knowledge is obliged to accept as 
it finds them the concepts which the understanding 
puts at its disposal. It can but enclose the facts, 
willing or not, in pre-existing frames which it takes 
as ultimate. It thus obtains a symbolism which is 
convenient, perhaps even necessary to positive science, 



32 THE PHILOSOPHY OF BERGSON 

but not a direct vision of its object. On the other 
hand, a theory of knowledge which does not replace 
intelligence in the general evolution of life, will 
teach us neither how the frames of knowledge have 
been constructed nor how we can enlarge or go 
beyond them. It is necessary that these two in- 
quiries, theory of knowledge and theory of life, 
should join one another and by a circular process 
push each other on indefinitely." 1 

We are now in a position to appreciate the lines 
of Bergson's answer to the question : How are 
metaphysics possible ? For the answer to the pre- 
vious question as to the possibility of biological 
sciences has shown that it is possible to have know- 
ledge which is not mathematical, which implies the 
power of recognising real individuals and trans- 
cending the artificial distinctions and divisions of 
practical thinking — a knowledge, therefore, which 
is not relative in the sense that mathematical 
accounts of real objects are relative ; that in 
this knowledge we no longer try to know parts 
of reality in terms of other parts (as Bergson says 
in the Introduction to Metaphysic, our knowledge 
is no longer symbolic but immediate), but study 
the articulation of reality : and that if in this way 

1 Creative Evolution, p. xiii. 



INTRODUCTION 33 

we take a synoptic view of the sciences, we shall 
not simply be doing the work of the sciences over 
again or merely finding out what they have done. 
For the knowledge of an organic whole is different 
from the successive knowledge of each of its parts : 
it is the holding together of all these parts in one 
intuition or one process of philosophical reflection. 
Thus we shall understand objects which can be 
studied in detail in separate inquiries, if we can 
bring the results of these inquiries together and unite 
them in a single comprehension. In Bergson's words, 
" An absolute can only be given in an intuition," 
and again, " But if there is a means of compre- 
hending a reality absolutely instead of knowing it 
relatively, of entering into the object instead of 
selecting points of view over against it, of having 
an intuition of it instead of making an analysis of 
it ; in short, of grasping it independently of any 
expression and any translation or symbolic repre- 
sentation ; that is metaphysic itself." * 

The possibility of metaphysic thus depends upon 
the critique of Intuition, which is, as I have said, at 
once the most interesting and the most difficult part 
of Bergson's work. In the meantime two points 
may be noticed about it. It will be an empirical meta- 

1 Introduction to Metaphysic (German translation), p. 4. 

C 



34 THE PHILOSOPHY OF BERGSON 

physic, however much that may seem a contradiction 
in terms : for reflection upon reality is only possible 
if we study reality in its details, as the particular 
inquiries may present it ; and further, and for the 
same reason, it will not be metaphysic in the sense in 
which Kant understood that term and criticised meta- 
physic. For inasmuch as it professes to come to 
a knowledge of the whole through a comprehension 
of the relations of the parts, if all the parts are 
not known (and that must necessarily be the case) 
the whole cannot be completely known. The 
metaphysic which Kant criticised began with the 
idea of the whole or of the completed task of know- 
ledge and hypostatised that idea. Bergson's meta- 
physic will be developing and incomplete. 

But that metaphysic should be incomplete 
and developing is not necessarily a reproach to 
it, inasmuch as reality as presented in the sciences 
of life is the same. This suggests the last im- 
portant element in the problems presented by the 
biological sciences. In discussing the character- 
istics of living organisms we have so far been 
considering only the relations of coexisting things ; 
relations which form a unity as say the parts of a 
picture do. But the chief difficulty of the biolo- 
gical sciences is concerned with changes in time, 



INTRODUCTION 35 

and the characteristic organic unity in life is a 
unity of elements through a process in time. 

No doubt the different individuals and different 
species and genera coexistent at any one time are 
related to one another, and can be understood 
through one another ; but they are more closely 
related to individuals and species preceding them 
in time. The study of the evolution of animal 
life is essentially a study of a process going on in 
time. Now if the relation of the parts of an 
organic process to one another is such that one 
part cannot be expressed in terms of another part, 
it follows that those elements which have not yet 
occurred in time cannot be got out of the parts 
that have already occurred ; cannot be got out 
because they are not contained in them, and a 
development of this kind forces upon us the convic- 
tion that the future cannot be said to be " contained 
in " the present, or the present to have been " con- 
tained in " the past. Mathematical causation implies, 
as we saw, that cause and effect are regarded as 
discrete and independent ; but it also implies 
that the effect can be stated in terms of the past, 
that is, eventually, that the effect is all the 
elements of the past only in a different order, that 
there is no change except change of order. If we 



36 THE PHILOSOPHY OF BERGSON 

examine more carefully the mathematical expression 
of causation, we find that terms like " contained in " 
or indeed "evolution" are spatial metaphors, whose 
spatiality is taken seriously ; that if causation is 
expressed as a relation of quantitative equivalence it 
is a timeless operation and does not really express 
change. If the concept of causation is fully worked 
out and expressed in the ideal that the relation of 
present and future is ideally stateable in terms of a 
mathematical equation, then change becomes unreal 
and impossible. Philosophers have found fault with 
the law of causation because it professes to give an 
explanation of change but gives none. But actually 
all knowledge of causation depends upon the per- 
ception of continuous change. If we realise that 
causation does not explain the relation of cause to 
effect, but from the relation of cause to cause 
proceeds to the relation of effect to effect, we can 
see that the time element in causation is taken for 
granted and not explained, and does not really 
enter into the calculations. Rather there is always 
at the back of any causal explanation a basis of 
observed change, and the real task of a theory of 
scientific causation when dealing with a complex 
change is not to show the identity of cause and 
effect, but to exhibit the complex change as a 



INTRODUCTION 37 

system of simpler changes ; these simpler changes 
being merely observed and not explained. In prac- 
tice, however, the investigator of causal connection 
tends to concern himself wholly with the quantita- 
tive relations and to set up the ideal of completely 
substituting quantitative calculation for mere obser- 
vation. He either forgets that all his calculations 
rest on a basis of perceived change, or what is more 
important, takes for granted that all changes can 
be expressed in terms of one simple change, and 
that therefore the change element in the calculations 
can be eliminated just because it is colourless and 
invariable. But once we begin to apply exact quan- 
titative analysis to perceived change we get into 
difficulties. For we cannot make the indivisibility 
of the perceived change which has been implied 
but not included in our calculations, itself a basis 
of measurement. Changes or movements, though 
as perceived they are indivisible, are not therefore 
necessarily identical ; each indeed is individual and 
distinct. Our method of measuring changes comes 
in the end to be a method of expressing change in 
the terms of the space through which it moves 
or the space through which it makes something 
else move ; distance or foot-pounds, or the rise 
of mercury in a thermometer. The change is 



3 8 THE PHILOSOPHY OF BERGSON 

expressed as movement of a uniform body, and its 
movement is reduced to the space through which 
it moves. Any attempt, then, to measure changes or 
state them in quantitative terms, means that all real 
change in which time is involved, is ignored in the 
calculations, and we are expressing changes in terms 
of space. As Kant says in the Critique, we can only 
represent time by drawing it as a line in space. 
Now it is the great achievement of modern mathe- 
matics and physics to have been able to measure 
movement in this way : to find a means of ex- 
pressing movements in terms of one another. 
But calculations in which movements are expressed 
in terms of their relation to a common measure of 
spatial distance must break down if at any time 
real movement has to be calculated, or if the 
relation between changes is not expressed in move- 
ments which may be regarded as equivalent to uni- 
form space. The quantitative account of changes 
is successful in particular spheres just because it is 
possible to fix upon a uniform observed change 
which is not explained, but which can be easily 
referred to as a standard of measurement. But 
such successful application bears the same relation 
to real movement as the application of geometry 
was found to bear to the real articulation of things. 



INTRODUCTION 39 

A standard of measurement is taken as a convenient 
standard of measurement, not necessarily because it 
represents at all the real articulation of the move- 
ment. Modern physics, for example, began when 
Galileo discovered how to measure movement in 
terms of the distance traversed in a uniform time 
(so many feet per second). Recent physicists have 
suggested the reverse method of taking the distance 
as uniform and comparing movements in terms of 
the different times taken to cover the same distance. 
The second method of calculation is apparently 
much harder, but has certain compensating advan- 
tages. Obviously the difference between these 
methods has nothing to do with the movement. 
A falling body does not fall in jumps of feet or 
of seconds. Neither method of description will in 
any way express the reality of the movement, but 
is only a way in which movements of the same 
kind, e.g. of falling bodies, may be compared in 
terms of distance in space. 

These considerations show : (1) That inasmuch 
as all such calculations imply an unexplained basis 
which is taken as uniform, they are in their nature 
partial explanations. The ideal of a universal 
mathematic, of representing the whole of change 
in terms of a mathematical equation, would thus 



4 o THE PHILOSOPHY OF BERGSON 

involve an ignoring of the essential conditions 
under which calculations can be made. (2) That 
such calculations of change are only valid in so far 
as change is capable of being expressed in terms of 
the space through which it moves — in terms of a 
homogeneous medium — as far, that is, as change 
or motion is represented as something with no real 
stopping-places or articulations (or to the nature of 
which the stopping-places are indifferent), but merely 
as measurable. Here we come to the real import- 
ance of the difficulties raised in the biological 
sciences in respect to change. For just as an organ- 
ism is distinguished from a spatial distance in 
having real boundaries the discovery and observa- 
tion of which is essential to the study of the 
organism — or, to put it more exactly, in being a 
really isolable system, though it may have no 
sharply denned boundaries — so an organic change 
will be distinguished from a homogeneous portion 
of time in that it will represent a real and 
distinct period, an isolable system, which cannot 
be studied or understood except as such an isolable 
system. Here again, in studying the problems 
set before us by evolution, we are confronted with 
individuality presented to us in experience, this 
time individuality in process of time, and any 



INTRODUCTION 41 

methods of inquiry which cannot recognise such 
individuality are foredoomed to failure. The 
mathematical sciences then, though they can 
measure movement, can only measure it in so 
far as it can be regarded as stateable in homoge- 
neous terms ; and their failure to take account of 
changes in the reality of which time is involved 
will bring out more clearly that they only succeed 
as they do by ignoring time. Hence, any method 
which is to study such organic changes must be a 
method which can recognise time as a reality, and 
we have to study change from a quite new point of 
view, if the time taken by the change, and not only 
the spatial results of the change, are to be studied. 
These considerations suggested by biology are 
suggested even more strikingly by the critique 
of scientific psychology, and the consideration of 
the method by which psychical processes can be 
observed. The common characteristic of the 
method essential in psychology and biology, 
namely, that it must be a method which regards 
time as real, leads to this suggestion in the critique 
of Intuition : the method of metaphysic must be 
one founded on observation of or reflection on 
real time. One of Bergson's most fruitful theses 
is that much of the confusion in early meta- 



42 THE PHILOSOPHY OF BERGSON 

physics has come from the fact that all have, 
whether consciously or unconsciously, stated 
reality in terms of space, and tried to eliminate 
time ; that the attempt to eliminate time is 
characteristic only of knowledge dominated 
entirely by conceptions of utility ; and that many 
antinomies, e.g. those of Idealism and Realism, will 
be resolved if we try to state the relation between 
knowledge and its objects in terms of time instead 
of space. 

To conclude, if we see that mathematical calcu- 
lation of change does not explain but tends to 
deny change, we shall discredit the implications 
of necessity and determination implied in a phrase 
like " contained in," and see that mathematical 
causation argues that the present is contained 
in the past only because it wrongly spatialises 
change. If we regard time as real, we cannot 
regard the present as contained in the past, we 
must recognise the emergence of what is new, 
recognise that there is creation. Yet at the same 
time what is new will not be out of relation to the 
past, any more than is the individual organism 
out of relation to other organisms ; and though the 
present cannot be got out of the past or stated in 
terms of it, it can be better understood in the light 



INTRODUCTION 43 

of it. We come to see that understanding and being 
able to anticipate or predict are not interchangeable 
terms. Hence we see a means of escape from the 
alternatives of a rigid Determinism and a mysterious 
unexplained Indeterminism, either of which was 
entirely inadequate to the facts of morals. 

Such in very broad outline are the considerations 
suggested when philosophy, which has hitherto taken 
for granted that all science must be mathematical, 
and has framed its own system on the same model, 
faces the problems raised by the growth of the 
biological sciences : and these considerations re- 
present the main lines of Bergson's work. The 
whole structure depends on the criticism of 
scientific psychology and biology, on such an ex- 
position of the antinomies involved in the notion of 
a universal mathematic, particularly as applied to 
these inquiries, as will make it clear that the notion 
of a mathematical psychology or biology involves a 
contradiction, and that therefore we must admit the 
existence of inquiries which do not aim at a mathe- 
matical exposition, and which have a method of 
their own. We shall begin, therefore, by examining 
Bergson's exposition of the antinomies of scientific 
psychology and biology, first in his analysis of the 
application of intensity to psychological states in 



44 THE PHILOSOPHY OF BERGSON 

Time and Free Will, then in his account of the 
antinomy involved in the doctrine of psychophy- 
siological parallelism in the article in the Revue de 
Metaphysique et de Moral, November 1 904, and the 
antinomy between Realism and Idealism as stated at 
the beginning of Matter and Memory. Then we 
shall examine his criticism of " scientific " biology 
in Creative Evolution, keeping throughout to the 
negative criticism, though noticing in what direc- 
tion the facts which are recalcitrant to mathe- 
matical categories point us in the search for a 
proper method : then his distinction between time 
and space, represented by the contrasted series 
of duration, succession, and quality on the one 
side, and extensity, simultaneity, and quantity 
on the other, his connection of the first with 
conscious experience and freedom, of the second 
with counting and necessity, as expounded in Time 
and Free Will, and consider how a consideration 
of the difficulties implied in motion prepare the 
way for the reconciliation of that contrast which 
is set forth in Matter and Memory. In the next 
chapter we shall consider Bergson's account of the 
relation of mind and body in his theories of per- 
ception and memory, and the use he makes of 
the practical nature of thinking. This last subject 



INTRODUCTION 45 

will lead us to a consideration of the contrast 
between scientific thinking and philosophical in- 
tuition, and of the account of reality as it appears 
to philosophy, the most important subjects of 
Creative Evolution. 



CHAPTER II 

EXPOSITION OF ANTINOMIES 

§ i. — Criticism of Scientific Psychology 

Time and Free Will, or Les Donnees Immediates 
de la Conscience, is, as the English name implies, 
connected with the problem of Free Will. Its 
general thesis is thus described by Bergson in his 
preface : — 

" What I attempt to prove is that all discussion 
between the determinists and their opponents im- 
plies a previous confusion of duration with extensity, 
of succession with simultaneity, of quality with quan- 
tity : the confusion once dispelled, we may perhaps 
witness the disappearance of the objections raised 
against Free Will, of the definitions given of it, 
and in a certain sense of the problem of Free Will 
itself." 

His argument thus professes to be an exposure 
of a confusion underlying both sides of the con- 
troversy in regard to Free Will. That confusion 

concerns the manner in which the mind or mental 

4 6 



EXPOSITION OF ANTINOMIES 47 

phenomena can be known. Duration is confused 
with extensity, because mental phenomena are re- 
garded as discrete and external to one another ; 
succession in time is described as though it were 
a spatial order, and it is assumed that if there is 
any connection between mental phenomena it must 
be a necessary connection, and ultimately capable of 
theoretical treatment. An exposure of this con- 
fusion then must imply that existence in time is 
of a different nature to existence in space, and 
that mental phenomena cannot be treated as though 
they were things external to one another in space. 
This must lead to a distinction between the manner 
in which mental phenomena can be studied and 
the methods of ordinary science, which will be a 
discussion as to the possibility and nature of 
psychology. 

Arguments for determinism are distinguished 
by Bergson, according as they are based on a 
theory of the relation of our mental states to one 
another, or on a theory of the relation of our 
mental states to the physical world. He describes 
them under the names of psychological and physical 
determinism. 

Physical determinism is based upon the general 
ground that liberty of action is incompatible with 



48 THE PHILOSOPHY OF BERGSON 

the fundamental properties of matter as discovered 
and exhibited by the physicist, and in particular 
incompatible with the law of the conservation of 
energy. But while all physical determinism has 
this general basis it may take two different forms, 
one of which involves a theory of the relation of 
mental states to one another, while the other 
does not. 

In the latter form it is not discussed in Time and 
Free Will, but in the article on Psychophysiological 
Parallelism, and in Matter and Memory, and must be 
reserved for treatment later. We will only notice 
here that according to it all action is physical : that 
there is in this respect no distinction between the 
actions of living beings and any other physical 
existences. Reality is regarded as a system of 
molecules acting and reacting upon one another 
according to necessary laws : our actions form a 
part of that system, and are to be calculated like 
anything else, because they are movements and 
nothing more. This view then implies that in the 
calculation of action psychical states may be entirely 
ignored : they are epiphenomenal, a by-product, 
and in no sense a determining factor. It is there- 
fore quite possible to hold determinism in this sense 
and yet deny the possibility of knowing our psychical 



EXPOSITION OF ANTINOMIES 49 

states. Such determinism is not really affected by 
the arguments in Time and Free Will, though it has 
difficulties of its own. 

Physical determinism in its other form believes 
in the necessary relation of action to motive and 
of motive to external environment without wishing 
to explain away the difference between psychical 
and physical. Compatibly with it we might hold, 
e.g. that consciousness is a form of energy 
different from all other forms of energy and not 
capable of explanation in terms of them, and yet 
insist that we could establish by observation and 
experiment quantitative relations between the psychi- 
cal and the physical. Determinism would be estab- 
lished if we could discover a law which would 
enable us to say, li so much motion or external 
stimulation, so much consciousness." For if con- 
sciousness varies quantitatively with the quantity 
of the physical stimulus, then even if we cannot 
explain the relation between physical and psychical, 
we know enough to say that the relation is deter- 
mined. In just the same way, whilst we 
do not understand the relation between cause 
and effect, yet from the relation of cause 
to cause we can anticipate the relation of effect 
to effect. Now this form of determinism does 

D 



50 THE PHILOSOPHY OF BEKGSON 

imply a theory as to the relation of mental states 
to one another. For quantitative relations between 
two series — here physical movements and psychical 
states — cannot be discovered without applying 
quantity to both. If therefore we can show that 
the relations between psychical states cannot be 
expressed quantitatively, the basis of this form 
of determinism is destroyed. This is what Berg- 
son means by saying that physical implies psycholo- 
gical determinism. Both at least assume that 
psychical states have quantity. 

Psychological determinism itself is not con- 
cerned with any view of the relation of soul and 
body. It supposes that our mental states are 
related to one another — that our actions are 
necessitated by our feelings and ideas and all the 
antecedent series of our states of consciousness. 
It was held most clearly by Spinoza, who allowed 
no causal relation between physical and psychical 
(each was an independent attribute of substance), 
and yet at the same time held that the mental 
life was to be regarded as a series of states 
rigidly determined. Very often determinism unites 
both these last two theories ; holds that our senti- 
ments and motives determine our actions and are 
in turn determined by environment. 



EXPOSITION OF ANTINOMIES 51 

Now both these last two forms of determinism 
appeal to undoubted facts (the physical determinism 
first described is much more a priori), and both are 
really based on an assumption. Partial know- 
ledge has already shown that our psychical states 
are partially determined by physical environment, 
and are in relations of partial determination with 
previous mental states, therefore, it is assumed, 
complete knowledge would show complete deter- 
mination. All that is wanted is to believe that 
knowledge can proceed further on the lines along 
which it has already successfully gone. Psychological 
determinism insists on the fact that connections 
can undoubtedly be established between our 
motives and our actions, that actions depend on 
character, that the more we know a man the 
more can we say what he will do under any 
given circumstances. Our mental life is not a 
mere jumble. Morality would be impossible if it 
were. It has regularities and displays an intelligible 
structure. May we not argue that the only reason 
why we are so incapable of prophesying human 
action with accuracy is that we know such a small 
portion of the relevant data, and that really our 
mental life is a system of necessary relations 
governed by the law of causation, but a system 



52 THE PHILOSOPHY OF BERGSON 

largely hid from us. This has plausibility. But 
the question which has not been considered in 
this argument is whether connection between our 
psychical states must be necessary connection, and 
whether we have gone any way at all to establishing 
causal relations between them. 

The other argument appeals to the undoubted 
effect on our mental life of physical excitations 
from without, to the undoubted connection between 
the mind and the brain and nervous system, to the 
fact that what we do depends upon our physical 
powers, and that these are dependent upon our 
position in the physical world. Psychology shows 
us relations between measurable physical move- 
ments and sensations. Physiology shows us in 
the study of the nervous system and of cerebral 
localisation a close connection between our thinking 
and the structure of our bodies. It seems to be 
going very little further to postulate a complete 
correspondence between the movements of the 
brain and our states of consciousness or between 
physical excitations and sensations which would 
leave no room for free will. If a partial cor- 
respondence is already discovered, would not 
more adequate knowledge reveal a complete 
correspondence ? 



EXPOSITION OF ANTINOMIES $ 3 

Now both these forms of determinism, just 
because they are based on obvious facts, are an 
advance upon an indeterminism which would deny 
all relation between character and action, or which 
would deny the physical limitations with which 
personality is surrounded. They are not to be 
refuted by a mere assertion that, although the 
facts so far bear out determinism, we can never 
overcome our failure in knowledge. What we 
have got to show if we are still to believe in 
liberty, is not that the facts already known are 
inadequate to establish determinism, but that the 
conditions implied in determinism are not only 
more than are known, but are of a kind directly 
inconsistent with the nature of what is known. 
Bergson's argument is, that while either form of 
determinism implies that psychical states stand in 
causal relations to one another, or can be expressed 
in quantitative terms of one another, if we examine 
our actual knowledge of psychical facts we shall 
find that that knowledge is possible only because 
we do not- regard psychical facts as capable of 
quantitative expression. He therefore examines 
what is known of psychical facts, in order to show 
that in no case are such facts measurable in terms 
of one another. 



54 THE PHILOSOPHY OF BERGSON 

Now states of consciousness are not in space, 
and have clearly no size in the ordinary sense. Yet 
we do ordinarily suppose that one can be more 
or less than another. That spatial things can be 
measured is obvious enough, but it is harder to 
see how what is non-spatial can be measured, and 
yet equally hard to deny to states of conscious- 
ness some kind of quantitative difference. That 
the quantity of psychical states, if they can be 
said to have any, is different from the quantity of 
things in space, is expressed in ordinary language 
in the distinction between intensive and extensive 
quantity. We should ordinarily admit that feel- 
ings and sensations have no size, but should assert 
that they have degree, and that degrees are 
measurable. That suggests that we can establish 
quantitative relations between sensations by measure- 
ment of differences of intensity or degree. 

Our problem therefore leads to an inquiry into 
the notion of intensive quantity, with the purpose, 
it must be remembered, of discovering whether we 
can establish direct quantitative relations between 
psychical facts. For that there are differences 
answering to our distinctions of intensity there 
can be no doubt. The important question is, 
whether these differences are of the quantitative 



EXPOSITION OF ANTINOMIES $$ 

nature that determinism would imply. The classi- 
cal treatment of the conception of intensive quantity 
is to be found in Kant's Critique of Pure Reason, 
in his account of the Principles of the Pure Under- 
standing. He sums up the result of his dis- 
cussion there by saying that he has shown that 
quantity has a quality, namely extension, and that 
quality has a quantity, namely degree. The two 
principles of the extensive quantity of all pheno- 
mena and the intensive quantity of the real in 
sensation are the foundations of geometry and 
physics respectively. If Kant's general account of 
intensive quantity is right, it would seem at first 
sight that the difference between it and extensive 
quantity is not of much importance for freedom. 
A conception which is at the basis of physics 
cannot be of very much importance for an ex- 
position of liberty. Kant, as we know from his 
correspondence, was led to an analysis of the 
conception from a consideration of what is im- 
plied in the laws of falling bodies. His point, 
put quite briefly, is that we cannot regard 
reality as constituted by space relations or exten- 
sion alone ; we must in science take account of 
the qualitative differences of the things that fill 
space, and regard such differences as effecting 



56 THE PHILOSOPHY OF BERGSON 

changes in a way that can be measured. For 
example, in the measurement of weight, with the 
consideration of which Kant was concerned, we 
must suppose that the same cubic capacity can 
be differently filled, and that differences in such 
fillings are measurable. Two objects may have 
the same volume, i.e. be of the same extensive 
quantity, and yet have a difference of weight 
which we can certainly measure. That seems to 
imply that in the same part of extension there 
can be more reality at one time than another. 
There is always something there ; there are no 
holes, and the something is therefore always the 
same size, and yet what is there can vary, and 
its variations can be measured. Things of exactly 
the same size can be of different weights. 

If this is so, it would seem to imply that we can 
measure quantity which is not extensive ; and that 
would be directly at variance with Bergson's con- 
tention, elaborated in the second chapter of Time 
and Free Will, that all measurement implies space. 
But when we come to examine Kant's account of 
intensive quantity, we find that he sees a great diffi- 
culty in the manner of its measurement. The 
nature of intensive quantity is described by him 
thus: " There is a gradual transition possible from 



EXPOSITION OF ANTINOMIES 57 

empirical to pure consciousness till the real of it 
vanishes completely and there remains a merely 
formal consciousness a 'priori of the manifold in 
space and time ; and therefore a synthesis also is 
possible in the production of a quantity of a sensa- 
tion from its beginning — that is, from the pure 
intuition onwards to any quantity of it." And 
again : " Every sensation is capable of diminution, 
so that it may decrease and gradually vanish. There 
is therefore a continuous connection between reality 
in phenomena and negation by means of many 
possible intermediate sensations, the difference be- 
tween which is smaller than the difference between 
the given sensation and zero or complete negation. 
It thus follows that the real in each phenomenon 
has always a quantity, though it is not perceived in 
apprehension, because apprehension takes place by a 
momentary sensation, not by a successive synthesis of 
many sensations. It does not advance from the 
parts to the whole, and though it has a quantity, it 
has not an extensive quantity. . . . It is a quantity 
apprehended as unity only, in which plurality can 
be represented by approximation only to negation." 
In this account there are certain difficulties in 
regard to the relation between sensations and the 
real in phenomena with which we are not con- 



58 THE PHILOSOPHY OF BERGSON 

cerned, but in the main the difficulties of the state- 
ment are our present interest. Kant seems to be 
at one and the same time affirming and denying 
that a sensation can be measured. " It has not an 
extensive quantity. It is a quantity apprehended 
as unity only." What kind of quantity can that 
possibly be? " The quantity is not perceived in 
apprehension, because apprehension takes place by 
momentary sensation, not by a successive synthesis 
of many sensations." On the other hand, he says 
that the sensation is capable of diminution so that 
it may decrease and gradually vanish, and refers to 
" intermediate sensations, the difference between 
which is smaller than the difference between the 
given sensation and zero." But if you cannot 
apprehend the quantity of a sensation, how can you 
compare the differences between sensations ? 

A consideration of the facts which suggested the 
problem may help to an explanation. We may have 
several objects of the same volume but of different 
weights and be able to measure the difference of 
their weights. An object A is twice the weight 
of another B of the same volume if A balances 
twice the volume that B balances of another sub- 
stance C, known to be of uniform mass. Thus we 
discover the relative weights of A and B by measur- 



EXPOSITION OF ANTINOMIES 59 

ing their effect upon C in terms of extensive 
quantity. That makes Kant say that there must 
be more reality in one than in the other, but that 
means no more than that it has been observed that 
things of the same extensive quantity and of dif- 
ferent qualities will produce on something else 
effects measurable as different extensive quantities — 
e.g. they will fall a different number of feet per 
second. The qualities can only be given relative 
degrees because of the discovered law of their 
behaviour. But in the things themselves we recog- 
nise simple qualitative distinctions, and the qualities 
themselves are discontinuous, and by simply noting 
the qualitative differences we could not arrange 
them in the order which the law of their behaviour 
afterwards prescribes. 

On the other hand, if we study qualitative 
differences in themselves, we find that qualities are 
like or unlike one another in different degrees. 
One thing may certainly be more like a second than 
it is like a third. We can, in certain cases at least, 
arrange qualitative differences in a series, as we do 
notes of music or shades of a colour, and this series 
can be constructed without any measurement of 
extensive quantity. But one member of the series 
cannot be expressed as so many times another, for 



60 THE PHILOSOPHY OF BERGSON 

no one quality can be regarded as a sum or complex 
of lesser qualities. It is sometimes suggested that 
in order to have an intense sensation we must go 
through all the less intense sensations between that 
sensation and feeling nothing. Kant seems to 
suggest something of the kind in talking of the 
possible " transition from empirical to pure con- 
sciousness," but he admits that the sensation is a 
momentary apprehension and one. Our experience 
of intensity is not the consciousness of a series or 
gradual transition at all, though such a series may 
be constructed from the analysis of different ex- 
periences. But no member of the series of quali- 
tative differences of degree is in any numerical ratio 
to another, and there is no sense in which one 
member of the series contains or is contained in 
another. If quantitative relations can be estab- 
lished between qualitative differences, it is solely 
because of the measurable effect of these differences 
on something else. The difficulty in Kant's account 
comes from the fact that he seems to use the word 
" intensive quantity " in two senses : in the first, in- 
tensity only means that, as in the facts of physics, 
the measurable effects of things of different quality 
but the same size lead us to infer that in the same 
extension there may be more reality at one time 



EXPOSITION OF ANTINOMIES 61 

than another ; the second is an attempt to explain 
the meaning of this " more " by the aid of intensive 
quantity in the sense of a directly observed series 
of qualitative differences, as though that which had 
more reality, contained in itself, or was somehow a 
synthesis of, other less intense qualities of the same 
series. 

In this analysis of Kant's account of intensive 
quantity, the results which are important for 
the question of the applicability of quantity to 
psychical states are these : measurable differences 
of quality, such as are implied in physics, depend 
upon establishing the connection between the sepa- 
rate qualitative differences and extensive quantity. 
On the other hand, qualitative differences arranged 
in a series by direct observation are not measurable, 
and the attempt to regard the differences measur- 
able in the first way as implying any kind of 
summing or synthesis of differences apprehended 
in the second way involves a confusion. Now our 
knowledge of psychical facts is derived partly from 
our observation of correspondences or simultaneities 
between sensations qualitatively distinct and external 
phenomena measurable in space, partly by a direct 
observation of and reflection upon our own psychical 
states. It is, therefore, easy to fall into the con- 



62 THE PHILOSOPHY OF BERGSON 

fusion we have noted between the two meanings 
of intensive quantity. The fact that we can give 
some kind of degree to almost all our psychical 
states leads to the assumption that they all have 
the first kind of intensive quantity and are there- 
fore measurable, and if measurable to be regarded 
as in quantitative relations to one another ; whereas 
psychical states are only measurable by means of 
their relation with measurable external phenomena, 
and the differences between them which can be 
directly observed are not differences of quantity. 

To put this in a way more akin to the lines 
of Bergson's argument, we may say that, strictly 
speaking, intensive quantity is a contradiction in 
terms. Differences of degree between qualities 
exist, but then they are not quantitative : or they 
may be measured, but it is not they themselves 
that are measured, but their relation to extensive 
quantities. A good instance of the confusion 
which Bergson is trying to dispel will be found in 
Galton's Inquiries into Human Faculty. Galton 
is describing inquiries into differences in different 
people's capacity of discrimination between sen- 
sations. Among other things he undertook 
experiments to test discrimination of weight. He 
describes the experiments in these words. " A series 



EXPOSITION OF ANTINOMIES 63 

of test weights is a simple enough idea — the diffi- 
culty lies in determining the particular sequence of 
weights that should be employed. Mine form a 
geometric sequence, for the reason that when 
stimuli of all kinds increase by geometric grades, 
the sensations they give rise to will increase by arith- 
metic grades, so long as the stimulus is neither so 
weak as to be barely felt, nor so strong as to excite 
fatigue. . . . The tests run, objectively speaking, 
in a geometric series, and subjectively in an arith- 
metic one." 1 This seems to be a rough statement 
of what is called Weber's law, but it is put in 
such a way as to take for granted that the sensa- 
tions increase arithmetically, i.e. that a more intense 
is the sum of the less intense sensations. Yet, if we 
ask what " subjectively in an arithmetic series" really 
describes, the answer is : a series of sensations, between 
any two of which the subject of the experiment can- 
not recognise a further discrimination. The quanti- 
tative nature of sensations, and the possibility of 
adding and establishing quantitative relations 
between them, has been taken for granted. 

Another very important example of a similar 
confusion is given in those theories of ethics which 
describe action as being determined by the greatest 

1 Galton, Inquiries into Human Faculty, Everyman edition, p. 23. 



64 THE PHILOSOPHY OF BERGSON 

pleasure or by aversion to the greatest pain. For this 
implies that the pleasure or pain exists as a certain 
size, and as being of that size determines our action. 
Yet when we come to examine the facts, it is impos- 
sible to give any meaning to the term " greatest 
pleasure," except the pleasure which we choose. It 
is measured by our choosing it, and cannot as being 
of such and such a size determine our choosing. 

In the first chapter of Time and Free Will 
Bergson examines our ways of estimating differences 
between psychical facts of all kinds. He is not 
concerned to deny either that certain psychical facts 
are related to external phenomena which can be 
measured, or that others can be placed in an ascend- 
ing scale of degree. Rather, the result of his analysis 
is to distinguish these two forms of apprehension 
which are ordinarily confused. By an analysis of 
our apprehension of feelings and sensations of all 
kinds, he shows that where we compare psychical 
facts directly with one another the terms " more " and 
" less " signify differences in a confused complexity, 
which can be apprehended but cannot possibly be 
accurately measured ; and that, on the other hand, 
any exact measurement is got by relation of psychical 
facts to external phenomena. 

His argument will be sufficiently understood if 



EXPOSITION OF ANTINOMIES 6$ 

we take his analysis of two very different kinds of 
psychical facts. Experiences of joy or sorrow are 
quite clearly psychical facts where intensity is not 
measured by reference to external phenomena. We 
talk of a great sorrow, and think that there are 
degrees in such experiences. But the expressions 
great or intense are not applied to a single detach- 
able element in our mental life, but describe the 
way in which more and more of our mental life is 
coloured by a feeling transfused throughout the 
whole. The more we are in the presence of feel- 
ings of this kind, the less can we describe them as 
elements found alongside of and separate from the 
rest of our mental life. When, therefore, we ex- 
perience intensity directly, we do not in any way 
imply that the mind is a sum or aggregate and its 
constituents similar complexes. On the contrary, 
our experience of such intensity is quite incom- 
patible with the conception of the mind consisting 
of elements which are in causal relations to one 
another. If from the cause we are to anticipate 
the effect, we must be able to calculate the amount 
of the cause independently of the effect. But in 
this experience of intensity a psychical state is 
apprehended as greater the more it enters into and 
affects the rest of our mental life. 

E 



66 THE PHILOSOPHY OF BERGSON 

At the other end of the scale come our simple 
sensations, such as those of colour, which seem to 
differ from such psychical facts as joy or sorrow 
in that they can be separated in some degree at 
least from the rest of our mental life and studied 
apart. We can, like Galton, study powers of sense 
discrimination without being much concerned as to 
what the subject of our experiments may otherwise 
be thinking. At the same time, such sensations 
are in close connection with external phenomena, 
and may, of course, be calculated by reference to 
such phenomena, e.g. we estimate differences in 
illumination in number of candle-power. But if 
we study them in themselves, without any measure- 
ment of their causes or occasions, we observe dif- 
ferences in them. Can such differences be regarded 
as quantitative? The importance of the example 
of different shades of colour is that it is often cited 
as the one instance where psychophysics has definitely 
established the possibility of measuring sensations. 
On examination of the facts, we find at first that 
here, as elsewhere, a number of different factors 
enter into our estimation of differences of light; 
that therefore our estimation is due rather to a 
combination of different qualitative differences 
than to changes of degree in the same quality. 



EXPOSITION OF ANTINOMIES 67 

For example, when we talk of colour having more 
light on it, really the colour changes. We see 
qualitative differences of tint, and we substitute, 
in Bergson's words, " the quantitative interpretation 
given by our understanding for the qualitative 
impression received by our consciousness." But 
though this may ordinarily be the case, in certain 
experiments in psychophysics the qualitative changes 
have been isolated, and it is claimed that quantitative 
relations have been established between them. 

What interpretation is to be put upon these 
experiments P The experiments made by Delbceuf 
assume that in the increase or diminution of light 
we perceive different colours, but he tries to 
show that there is real meaning in talking of the 
distance between these colours. Two shades of 
grey are taken and a third is varied until the 
third is pronounced to be equally distant from the 
other two. Is not this at last a case where quan- 
tity is estimated by the sensations themselves ? If 
the sensation of the contrast between A and C is 
equal to the sensation of the contrast between B 
and C, that will mean that two sensations can be 
equal without being identical, which is what quanti- 
tative measurement involves. 

Now is equal distance here only a metaphor, or 



68 THE PHILOSOPHY OF BERGSON 

can it be taken so literally that from it one can 
arrive at a unit of measurement for sensations ? 
The implications of Delbceuf's experiment are seen 
better in the light of Weber's law. That law states 
a relation between the increase of the stimulus 
causing a sensation, and the perceptible difference 
between one sensation and another, of such a nature 
that the amounts of stimulus necessary to produce 
perceptible changes in sensation in any one series 
have a definite and calculable relation to one 
another. There is some dispute as to the proper 
formulation of this law, but little doubt that some 
such relation between a definite increase in stimulus 
and a definite change in sensation exists. But that 
of itself does not imply quantitative relations be- 
tween the sensations. The increase in the cause 
is continuous and of extensive quantity ; the sensa- 
tion changes in jumps, from one qualitative differ- 
ence to another. The psychophysicist proceeds to 
take these smallest discernible differences as equal 
to one another, and therefore as capable of treat- 
ment as quantities. They are regarded as minima 
of sensation, and any sensation is regarded as some- 
how an aggregate of such minima. Here you have 
the common character of different sensations which 
corresponds to the common character of different 



EXPOSITION OF ANTINOMIES 69 

extensions in virtue of which they can be counted. 
But this involves the position already examined, 
that by intensive quantity is meant the percep- 
tion of the series of the lower grades through 
which a sensation is supposed to pass. The 
objection still holds that, as Kant says, the appre- 
hension of the sensation is immediate, and that its 
degree is not arrived at by counting the inter- 
mediate stages. This is the important point. For 
to regard a sensation as " a sum, obtained by the 
addition of the minimum differences through which 
we pass before reaching it," is to say that we measure 
it through its parts, as in Kant's words we measure 
a line " by running through its parts and holding 
them together." But that implies that the parts 
are separately discernible ; whereas in this case there 
are no parts, there are only the several sensations 
perceived to be different. The difference can only 
be known when the sensations have been experi- 
enced and placed in a certain series, and neither the 
series nor any one of the sensations can be regarded 
as constituted by the differences. The perception 
of qualitative difference is ultimate. Any facts 
about the continuous change of the stimuli neces- 
sary to produce such different sensations have 
nothing whatever to do with the question. There 



70 THE PHILOSOPHY OF BERGSON 

is no justification for calling one smallest percep- 
tible difference equal to another ; it means nothing 
more than that they are smallest perceptible differ- 
ences. When therefore Delbceuf, as the result of 
his experiments in colours which are separated by 
more than the smallest perceptible difference, says 
that two sensations of colour are equidistant from 
a third, it means that there are the same number 
of distinguishable sensations between A and B as 
between B and C, but does not mean that a differ- 
ence between two widely separated sensations can 
on examination be seen to consist or be made up of a 
number of smaller differences, as the idea of quantity 
would imply. We have learnt by experience to dis- 
criminate such different sensations, and we estimate 
the difference by the number of sensations we have 
learnt by experience to place between the two original 
sensations, not by any quantitative analysis of the 
difference itself. We are still as far as ever from 
being able to regard sensations as a sum or from 
finding any unit of measurement. 

In the analysis of the intensity of sensations 
which occupies the first chapter of Time and Free 
Will Bergson has, I think, proved what he sets 
out to prove, but it is necessary to consider 
the limits of the problem he sets himself. He is 



EXPOSITION OF ANTINOMIES 71 

examining the view that psychical facts can be 
stated in terms of one another or regarded as being 
aggregates of parts. The facts of intensity had 
been thought to warrant such a view. Now the 
examination of the two cases we have considered 
suggests that in so far as intensity is estimated by 
a direct comparison of mental states with one 
another, it is not, strictly speaking, quantitative — 
the intensity certainly does not represent the size of 
a whole or aggregate of parts : that, on the other 
hand, wherever definite measurement or counting 
is possible, it is really the extensive cause or occa- 
sion that we are counting. We seem to have only 
two elements to consider — purely mental states of a 
vague complexity apprehended by internal reflection, 
and external phenomena in space. But while in 
the examination of Delboeuf's experiments it was 
shown that qualitative differences themselves are 
not measurable, it was also implied that the 
qualitative differences can be directly recognised, 
and further that one colour can be seen to be more 
like a second than a third. Bergson's criticism 
refutes any attempt to give such experience of like- 
ness a quantitative expression, but does not deny 
the experience itself. He is, however, so much 
occupied with criticising the theory that psychical 



72 THE PHILOSOPHY OF BERGSON 

states are quantitative, that he does not sufficiently 
recognise the significance of this experience of like- 
ness and unlikeness and its importance for know- 
ledge. The chapter gives the impression that all 
qualitative differences are differences of complexity, 
of a greater or less transfusion over the whole 
mental life. Now it is only such differences that 
can be called from direct observation more or less 
intense, but such differences as different shades 
of colour, though not quantitative, are separable 
from the rest of our mental life, and we can 
recognise degrees of likeness and unlikeness between 
them. Bergson's neglect of this sometimes seems 
to suggest that qualitative differences are more truly 
apprehended the more they are seen confusedly in 
the whole environment of the mental life, and that 
on the other hand if they are discerned in external 
objects, their differences are in the end different 
relations to extensive quantity. Hence arises the 
notion that objects as seen in space are seen only 
quantitatively, and that qualitative differences are 
confined to the inner life and to what Bergson calls 
duration. Yet the intensity of a simple state, as 
Bergson himself says, " is a certain quality or nuance 
of that state." x It gets its intensity from association 

1 Bulletin de la Societt Fran^aise de Philosophic ; I. 2, p. 6i. 



EXPOSITION OF ANTINOMIES 73 

with what can be measured extensively, but these 
nuances display a certain system and regularity of 
their own which are of great importance in science. 
For whatever the ideal of science may be, in prac- 
tice it never banishes the recognition of qualitative 
likeness and unlikeness. We are continually deal- 
ing with qualities which are taken as identical 
because they are indistinguishable. We may know 
in science that two qualities which appear to us 
indistinguishable really contain differences, and yet 
we assume that the fact that they are indistin- 
guishable is a sign of some identity. And all 
scientific inquiry depends on the power of distin- 
guishing relevant likenesses and unlikenesses. We 
cannot make the simplest judgment of the form, 
" This is an instance of such and such," without 
using our perception of the relations between 
qualitative differences. All accounts of particular 
laws of causation imply the possibility of recog- 
nising that the qualities of one object are so like 
those of another that both may be treated as 
instances of one law. This becomes of great 
importance, as we shall see, for Bergson's account 
of logic, which he sometimes insists is purely quan- 
titative and concerned throughout with identity. 
But such a logic would not only, as Bergson 



74 THE PHILOSOPHY OF BERGSON 

insists, be inadequate to the study of facts of life : 
it would have almost no relation to the study of any 
empirical phenomena at all. 

Further, if all causation implies the recognition 
of degrees of likeness and unlikeness which cannot 
be reduced to quantitative terms, the proof of the 
non-quantitative nature of psychical states is clearly 
not enough to except some psychical states from 
being causally related to external phenomena. Nor 
does Bergson argue that such simple states are 
not caused. If we are to assert Free Will, we 
must show that the correspondence which does 
exist between them and external relations cannot 
be extended to our whole mental life. 

We must then examine Bergson's account 
of such correspondence, but it may be worth 
while noting briefly the answer which at this 
stage suggests itself as to the nature of psycho- 
logy. A mathematical psychology has been shown 
to be impossible if psychical states have no 
measurable quantity, but differences in psychical 
states can be apprehended without quantitative 
measurement. Bergson's analysis has disclosed im- 
mediately discernible differences in mental states, 
known by introspection or reflection upon our 
mental operations. This seems to point to the right 



EXPOSITION OF ANTINOMIES 75 

method of psychology being that of philosophical 
reflection. Yet as each man can only reflect upon 
his own mental states, psychology might thus seem 
to be confined to uncommunicable autobiography. 
For if we know our mental states only by internal 
reflection upon them, how can we say anything 
about them to others? 

But we have seen that psychical states, though 
qualitatively different, may be related to quantitatively 
comparable external causes or effects. Psychology 
approaches a science in so far as in psych ophysics it 
studies the correspondences or the regular simul- 
taneities between qualitatively distinct mental facts 
which are treated out of their relation to their 
mental environment and quantitatively measurable 
relations. It can never become an exact science, just 
because to regard such qualitatively distinct mental 
facts as separable from their environment is to 
falsify them. As psychology concerns itself more 
with profounder mental states, it must follow more 
the method of philosophical reflection, but use for 
the communication and expression of its results the 
simultaneities between that which is experienced 
only by the subject and the external facts which 
are common or may be common to all observers. 
Hence the necessity and the difficulty of using 



76 THE PHILOSOPHY OF BERGSON 

two very different methods — that of philosophical 
reflection and of empirical study of correspon- 
dences — at one and the same time. 



§ 2.— Criticism of Theories of the Relation 
of Mind and Body 

This notion of correspondence between psychical 
states and physical suggests, as we noticed before 
in passing, an answer on the part of the deter- 
minists to the first chapter of Time and Free 
Will. For the physicist may admit that it is im- 
possible to measure or accurately to determine 
psychical states (these, it may be admitted, are not 
matter for the scientist), but may contend that as 
we find an elaborate system of correspondences 
between qualitatively distinct psychical states and 
quantitatively measurable external causes, we should 
study merely the physical movements, and then in 
the general notion of correspondence find a key to 
the interpretation or prediction of psychical changes. 
It will not be necessary to measure the psychical 
states if they are found to exhibit such qualitative 
gradeable distinctions as may make the notion of 
correspondence intelligible. 

Some such theory as this is implied in psycho- 



EXPOSITION OF ANTINOMIES 77 

physical parallelism. That doctrine may be and 
often is held without implying any view as to the 
difference in nature between physical movements 
and psychical states. We may either hold on the 
materialist side that the physical motions are the 
primary reality, while consciousness is epipheno- 
menal and negligible, or we may hold that move- 
ments in the brain and states of consciousness form 
two series of phenomena which correspond at all 
points, without necessarily causing one another. 
But all upholders of psychophysical parallelism agree 
in postulating a complete correspondence between 
brain movements and representations. The position, 
Bergson says, may be variously stated as follows : — 

" Any given cerebral state involves a deter- 
mined psychological state." 

or " A superhuman intelligence which saw the 
interplay of the atoms constituting the 
human brain, and which had the key of 
psychophysiology, could read in the brain as 
it worked all that passed in the correspond- 
ing consciousness." 

or " Consciousness expresses nothing more than 
what goes on in the brain ; it only expresses 
it in a different language." 1 

1 Revue de Metaphysique et de Morale, 1 904, p. 895. 



78 THE PHILOSOPHY OF BERGSON 

In Bergson's criticism of this doctrine, he is 
not attacking the notion that there is close corre- 
spondence between mind and brain. His criticism, 
on the contrary, is a preliminary to his own account 
of the relation as exposed in Matter and Memory. 
He there argues for an elaborate correspondence 
between psychological and brain states, but only in 
so far as psychological states issue in action. He 
implies that any psychological fact involves a con- 
comitant brain change, but not vice versa. We 
are not therefore concerned with the general ques- 
tion whether there is a connection between mind 
and brain, but whether that connection is what Mr. 
Bertrand Russell has called a one-one relation. 
Bergson's contention is that such a theory is self- 
contradictory. 

His argument really bases itself upon the question 
of individuality or articulation. We may, he says, 
regard reality from two points of view. We may 
either accept the divisions and articulations of things 
as they are given in perception, a view which he 
calls for the purposes of this argument idealist : 
or we may hold that these distinctions have no real 
value — that behind the seeming discrete and 
separate beings which we see lies the reality of a 
system of energy, or of acting and reacting mole- 



EXPOSITION OF ANTINOMIES 79 

cules which we cannot see, but to which science can 
penetrate by thought. The doctrine of psycho- 
physiological parallelism is only possible if we hold 
both views at once — that is the inconsistency which 
it involves. To take first the idealist view, psycho- 
physical parallelism, in the manner which Avenarius 
has described in his account of Introjectionism, 
begins by taking the brain as something presented 
like other things, and then goes on to regard it as 
the seat or source of representations, something 
on which all those things presented are dependent 
although it itself is one among the things presented. 
But this involves an evident contradiction. For it 
means that first we take the brain as a part of the 
whole system and then say that the system is inside 
the brain. Really, if we take away the brain, we 
take away one part, and only one part, of the whole 
reality. You can say, in other words, that move- 
ment in the brain is the effect of exterior objects, 
but you cannot say with any meaning that it is 
the exterior objects, or the representation of them. 
Brain movement must be regarded as one series of 
movements related to others, but as being in the 
world of representation with them. If we seek to 
avoid this contradiction by saying that while the 
presentations are dependent on the brain, the things 



80 THE PHILOSOPHY OF BERGSON 

themselves are independent, we are taking another 
standpoint, that of separation betweenvpresentation 
and reality. 

From this second standpoint reality is more than 
is presented ; behind the presentation there is some- 
thing different from it. Thus it might seem al- 
lowable to regard a brain movement as presented, 
and also the cause of presentations ; as being at one 
and the same time movement and presentation, on 
the ground that states of consciousness and move- 
ments in the brain are two aspects of a reality which 
is neither movement nor perception. It may be said : 
" We are in ourselves conscious of perceiving ; we 
are also conscious of what is perceived ; but the 
reality is not as we perceive it, something separate 
and independent of us, nor is it perceiving as we are 
aware of it. It is an imperceivable system of mole- 
cular changes, of which our perceiving and what 
we perceive are but aspects." This is a possible 
view. But if the brain is made but an aspect of a 
whole system of reality, the apparent independence 
and isolation of the subject is denied : it is then im- 
possible to go back to the other view, and treat states 
of consciousness as one system, and brain movement 
as another. Why should states of consciousness be 
parallel to brain movements, and not parallel to 



EXPOSITION OF ANTINOMIES 81 

everything else ? If brain movements are made 
the key to states of consciousness they are thereby 
isolated, because they are isolable in perception : but 
this contradicts the denial of the real independence 
of things perceived as separate. 

Bergson's argument can, I think, be stated, apart 
from its relation to alternative metaphysical theories, 
in a more simple form, which will have the 
additional advantage of answering the position 
sometimes put forward, that the metaphysical 
absurdities of an assumption may be disregarded 
for the sake of its scientific usefulness. If we 
state the hypothesis of psychophysical parallelism 
in a way that implies that corresponding to every 
movement of the brain is a state of consciousness, 
or that from a knowledge of the movements of the 
brain the series of states of consciousness could 
be predicted, we postulate, as has been said, a 
one-one relation between the two series of brain 
movements and states of consciousness. But that 
necessitates the two series being articulated in the 
same or a corresponding way. Then we must at 
once ask whether the relations and discriminations 
of states of consciousness are in any way of the 
same kind as the relations and discriminations 
between movements. Once that question is put, 

F 



82 THE PHILOSOPHY OF BERGSON 

it becomes obvious that we can only make brain 
movements the key to psychical states if the latter 
are external to one another, as are the movements. 
Here is, I think, the real force of Bergson's exposi- 
tion of the antinomy. In studying brain movements 
we may adopt the distinctions discernible but not 
clear cut in the brain tissues. But what call have 
we, then, to assume that the psychical series is arti- 
culated in at all the same kind of way ? If, on the 
other hand, we go behind the discernible distinctions 
and postulate movements of atoms or molecules, 
and suppose for each change in the system of mole- 
cules a change in consciousness, we are confronted 
with the question : On what principle can we 
possibly discriminate a series of changes in con- 
sciousness which can in any way answer, correspond, 
or be parallel to a system of changes in a system of 
molecules ? If we push sufficiently far the notion 
of the brain as a system of molecules, we must 
admit that any divisions or discriminations which 
we can use or operate upon in that system must 
be as entirely artificial as divisions in a continuous 
space, and can bear no relation to the organic 
articulation of states of consciousness : if, on the 
contrary, we take divisions presented by the cells of 
the brain tissue or their systems, we are dealing with 



EXPOSITION OF ANTINOMIES 83 

a real articulation, but one that has its own charac- 
teristics, and there need be no parallelism between 
that and another series. The whole notion of 
parallelism entirely ignores the difficulty of real 
articulation, because, being based on mathematics, 
it regards the two series as divisible in an inde- 
finite number of ways, so that a point may be 
taken anywhere in one and a similar point found 
to correspond with it in the other series. Yet at 
the same time it is supposed that the physical 
series would give the key to the second series as 
we are actually conscious of it ; in other words, to 
the series whose articulation is given in our think- 
ing ; not a homogeneous continuum but an organic 
series. In practice we only work out the parallelism 
by taking for granted distinctions in consciousness, 
and looking for similar distinctions in brain move- 
ments — that is, we allow the psychical series to 
be the clue to the physical. To suppose that the 
process could be inverted, is not to see that without 
the psychical clue we have no principle by which we 
can say this is one movement in the brain and that 
is another. Because we discover localisations of 
functions, we cannot go on to postulate that such 
localisations can be indefinitely extended, and invert 
the passage from one series to another. When we 



84 THE PHILOSOPHY OF BERGSON 

leave experiment and come to theory, the fact that 
the theory starts with brain movements has the im- 
portant and prejudicial effect on psychology that it 
tends to regard states of consciousness as parts cut 
out of space external to one another, in a way that 
makes all psychology impossible. Atomic psycho- 
logy is now given up by almost all psychologists, 
but it is not recognised how it is implied in the 
doctrine of psychophysical parallelism. The mistake 
of supposing that, because the two systems are 
related, each part of one is related to a definite part 
of the other, involves treating the psychical series as 
though it were spatial, yet the terms of the problem 
cannot allow for the two series both being in space. 
The metaphysical difficulties in the theory are the 
consequence of trying to treat the relation between 
physical and psychical in terms of space, as the word 
parallel implies. The difficulties in that treatment 
are stated in Bergson's criticism of Idealism and 
Realism at the beginning of Matter and Memory. 

He begins the first chapter of that book by 
trying to waive for the moment all preconceived 
theories, and describe the facts as we find them. 1 

1 It is somewhat startling to find Bergson describing these facts as 
"images," but as his argument is not affected by any implications which 
might seem to be involved in talking of being in the presence of " images" 
rather than " things " or " objects," I have omitted the word in my account. 



EXPOSITION OF ANTINOMIES 85 

When that is done we are confronted with the 
great difference it seems to make whether we take 
as our starting-point what is implied in the objects 
of perception as we know them, or what is implied in 
the act of perceiving or being conscious, and this even 
though we have to attempt to explain the implica- 
tions of the side of approach we do not choose, 
though there seems no method of doing so con- 
sistently. On the one hand we have as an ap- 
parently obvious and intuitive fact that things are 
what they are independently of our perceiving 
them. Science, merely elaborating and working 
out what is implied in our ordinary perception, 
tells us of a world of objects acting and reacting 
upon one another according to definite laws, form- 
ing a system of calculable relations. This system 
is not changed by our perceiving it — it is appre- 
hended, and yet we who perceive it, at least our 
bodies, are part of it. The effects of other bodies 
on ours and the actions of our bodies on others 
take place according to the same physical laws 
which govern the relations of the other parts of 
the system. But the relations between living bodies 
and their environment are obviously of a much more 
complicated nature than those of some other parts 
of the system : their actions and reactions, if really 



86 THE PHILOSOPHY OF BERGSON 

of a piece with the rest of the system, are not 
so easily calculable. We have to recognise the 
fact of life and its peculiarity and the compara- 
tive individuality of living things. We may of 
course refuse to regard this difficulty as ultimate, 
holding that it is a difficulty of greater complexity 
and nothing more. At the same time we have 
to admit that one part of this system, namely 
our own body, is known not only as part of the 
perceived world but in feeling, and feelings at 
least seem to have a direct relation to action. 
If I reflect on the part which my consciousness 
seems to play in the system of movements in the 
world, "it is present in the form either of feeling 
or sensation on all the occasions when I take 
the initiative, and is eclipsed and disappears as 
soon as my activity becomes automatic and no 
longer needs consciousness." 1 If we study living 
bodies we find a peculiar structure, a nervous 
system and sensory organs, which put the living 
body in a special relation to its environment. 
The body as a physical system is in relation to 
all surrounding physical objects, but through its 
various sense organs and the structure of the 
nervous system, in a special relation to certain 

1 Matter and Memory, p. 2. 



EXPOSITION OF ANTINOMIES 87 

objects and not to others. If we sever a nerve 
or alter the grey matter in the brain, the body is 
still in physical relation to other objects, but its 
perceptions are destroyed, and as a consequence 
of such destruction the actions of the body are 
different, the body's sphere of action is limited. 
The body continues to be a part of the system, 
but no longer plays a privileged part in it. Now 
it is possible to contend that it is true that in 
the meantime all these actions of a living body 
are not intelligible as part of the physical system, 
and are made more intelligible by the assumption 
of freedom only because of the present limits of 
our knowledge. But we shall then have given up 
the obvious facts in the name of the consistency 
of the system, only to find that consistency is im- 
possible. For the fact of consciousness will not 
fit in with any objective account of the relations 
of the body to other elements in the system based 
on the principle of the conservation of energy. If 
consciousness be a part of the system, then the 
doctrine that we can regard the body and its 
surroundings as a system of mutually determined 
motions breaks down, for consciousness is not 
a motion. Further, the differences in conscious- 
ness which should be the result of the differences 



88 THE PHILOSOPHY OF BERGSON 

in surrounding objects are not differences in result, 
but differences actually in the objects of con- 
sciousness — consciousness of different objects. 
Consciousness as a result is immeasurable. Hence 
the science which tries to measure all the move- 
ments of the nervous system, and is on firm in- 
telligible ground in treating of a system of mutually 
determined motions, has to treat consciousness as 
epiphenomenal, something which appears at certain 
stages or circumstances in the development of 
a nervous system, but is itself not part of it. 
But its existence, however much it may be mini- 
mised, must be admitted, and if admitted it destroys 
the system based on the conservation of energy. 

If, on the other hand, we start with the act of 
perceiving, the position of the body as centre of the 
rest of the world is the most obvious fact confront- 
ing us. For whether I perceive this or that is 
dependent on the motions of my body. As I 
turn my head round from one side of the room 
to another, what I perceive changes. Thus I get a 
system " which I call my perception of the universe, 
which may be entirely altered by a very slight change 
in my body." 1 Which things lie within my field of 
vision depends on the position of my body; to 

1 Matter and Memory, p. 12. 



EXPOSITION OF ANTINOMIES 89 

which of these things I shall attend and what I shall 
think of them seems further to depend on my past 
history, on the previous series of my perceptions. 
The perceived objects are the circumference of a 
circle the centre of which is my conscious life 
with its memories and thoughts, and through a 
knowledge of that alone is intelligible the im- 
portance to me of these objects. Thus we may 
be led to consider that the fact of things being 
objects of my consciousness is their most important 
aspect and the key to their nature. In other words, 
we may take the position of Berkeley. The ex- 
planation of purposes and actions is found in the 
self, with all its complex unity of memory and 
thinking, and there alone. But here again we 
commit ourselves to a system which we cannot 
work out. If we start with the soul's actions and 
purpose as intelligible, we find these very actions 
implying elements which are independent of them. 
For in our action we do not simply impress intel- 
ligible form upon an otherwise formless substance. 
We act upon things already given, with shapes and 
actions of their own. Only through knowledge of 
the laws and character of external things can the self 
use these things for its purposes. We can only act 
by first discovering what things are independently 



90 THE PHILOSOPHY OF BERGSON 

of our action. Purposive action is impossible 
unless we know how things will behave under 
different conditions, i.e. unless we can regard the 
world in which we are to act as a system of objects 
dependent upon one another and having mutually 
determined relations, as a world of foreseeable 
events. Thus the necessities of action lead us to 
view reality as something over against the subject — 
in other words, lead us back to the first system. 
These are the two systems — the system as per- 
ceived, where each part M varies for itself, and in 
the perfectly definite proportion in which it under- 
goes the real action of surrounding parts the system 
of science — and the other, where all vary for one 
alone, and in proportion as they reflect the action 
of this special part," 1 and there is no way from 
one to another. Conscious action demands some- 
thing given and predictable over against it. Science 
of the objective must admit the facts of perception 
and yet can find no room for them. In Bergson's 
words, " Realism makes perception an accident, and 
consequently a mystery. Idealism makes science an 
accident and its success a mystery." 2 

The way round this antinomy we must leave for 
examination later. In the meantime we may notice : 

1 Matter and Memory , p. 12. 2 Ibid. p. 16. 



EXPOSITION OF ANTINOMIES 91 

(1) Part of the absurdity involved comes from the 
use of the expressions " inside " and " outside " in 
Realism and Idealism. For they imply that reality, 
however viewed, is exhaustible in spatial terms. 
Yet external reality cannot hold consciousness inside 
it. Again, there is not really any meaning in the 
expression " inside " at all in such a phrase as 
"within" or " inside consciousness," by which 
idealism has been trying to express a fact ignored 
by a realism content to insist on the externality of 
perceptions. The recognition at the same time 
both of the independence of objects and the im- 
portance of the knower and his individuality in 
determining what he perceives cannot be expressed 
by any spatial metaphors, just because such meta- 
phors are trying to express all the facts as though 
they formed a picture we could see — a picture 
which omits individual action and also omits time. 

(2) The two systems are both involved in 
action. If it were not for the fact of action which 
is inexplicable on purely mechanical lines, the 
scientific system might ignore or deny conscious- 
ness : if it were not necessary to act, the purposing 
or planning self need not concern itself with the 
prediction of objects and study of mechanical laws. 
It is in action that the two systems come together. 



92 THE PHILOSOPHY OF BERGSON 

Possibly, therefore, an analysis of action may throw 
some light on their connection. 

(3) The study of action must be the study of 
the individual. For the difficulty comes from the 
individual having to enter into the two systems at 
once. Because he is a real individual the agent will 
not fit into the mechanical system : because he is 
a finite individual, limited in space and time, he 
has to act with the help of the mechanical system 
by knowing things in their repetitions and simi- 
larities. 

This antinomy therefore arises from an attempt 
to depict reality wholly in terms of space. Its 
examination drives us to a consideration of time, 
and from the recognition of the impossibility of 
describing in terms of space the progress of the 
individual in time, to consider how far the problem 
of knowledge can be stated in terms which assume 
real time and real individuality. 

§ 3. — Criticism of Biological Method 

We shall find ourselves led to similar considera- 
tions by Bergson's analysis of the difficulties of 
biological method. There we have worked out on 
a larger scale the antinomy which results in the 



EXPOSITION OF ANTINOMIES 93 

rival claims of consciousness and a mechanical 
system to furnish the best understanding of life. 

Creative Evolution begins with a description of 
the life of consciousness as it appears to us when we 
reflect upon it. It is an existence of constant change. 
Not only do we pass from sensation to sensation, 
from one act of thought to another : these sensa- 
tions and thoughts are not fixed entities, but are 
themselves always changing. Yet this is only half 
the truth. For these changes form a life or a 
duration which is one and in a sense continuous. 
The unity of our mental life cannot be described 
by saying that all these states of consciousness 
belong to a self who has them all and yet is none 
of them. For if we abstract the self from the 
changing states, we get on the one hand an un- 
knowable and empty self, and on the other a series 
of discontinuous states, which nothing can unite. 
The truth is that we carry our past mental life 
along with us into each act of consciousness. 
Instead of a series of discrete states side by side 
and an unchanging self somewhere above or behind 
them, we find a continuous duration which changes 
and is yet one, just because the past states do not 
disappear but enter into the present. They enter 
into the present not simply in that the present is their 



94 THE PHILOSOPHY OF BERGSON 

effect, but in that all consciousness of the present 
is also consciousness of the past. Consciousness 
cannot be regarded as a series of momentary states : 
for all consciousness is consciousness of time and 
hence of change. Time and real experience of time 
are of the essence of conscious life. Time is irre- 
versible just because all past experience enters into 
present experience and helps to constitute its char- 
acter. For that reason each moment of conscious- 
ness is unique ; though I may be conscious of the 
same thing at different times, my consciousness of 
it, being coloured by my past experience, cannot be 
the same at different points in my experience, and 
hence there is in conscious life, strictly speaking, no 
repetition or recurrence. 

On the other hand our knowledge of material 
objects depends upon the possibility of repetitions. 
In physics, e.g. we are dealing with objects which 
change places, which they may resume. Astrono- 
mical calculations are based upon recurrences of 
similar positions. We can anticipate the future 
there because we are concerned only with order and 
changes of order. When the same order is repeated, 
we are in the presence of the same fact. The lapse 
of time makes no difference to it. Hence in the 
calculations of such sciences the lapse of time is 



EXPOSITION OF ANTINOMIES 95 

ignored. The measurement of time is the measure- 
ment of simultaneities. For each time that the earth 
repeats its position in regard to the sun, the moon 
repeats its position in regard to the earth rather 
more than twelve times. Time is measured by a 
comparison between such different recurring orders, 
and its real duration neglected altogether. 

Yet just because this measurement of time is 
relative, it can only be applied to parts of the 
universe. For it assumes one general time or 
one general system of changes, and only compares 
among themselves parts of the whole that is chang- 
ing. If we think of the whole we can no longer 
neglect the reality of time. For the very repetitions 
which we have been measuring imply that the whole 
changes. Were there no real change, there would 
not even be discernible repetitions. We can measure 
time in terms of order in space then 5 just because 
we regard the time as belonging not to any of the 
distinct changes or minor systems of change we are 
examining, but to the whole of which these orders 
are but parts : in other words, just because we think 
that these systems have no time of their own. 
They are not individuals. They are separately 
discernible in space ; were they not, no measure- 
ment could be possible, but they are all parts of 



96 THE PHILOSOPHY OF BERGSON 

one system in which their individuality is merged. 
Measurement of time, then, which rests on repetitions 
cannot apply to the whole. The whole itself must 
be regarded as having real time or duration. We 
have the individual consciousness, which experiences 
its own unique time and displays real change, and 
the change of the universe, real but too vast to be 
experienced : between them those changes which, 
just because they are not regarded as independent, 
but as being parts in the system, can be measured in 
relation to one another, as common effects of one 
pervading force or law. 

The question which has to be faced in biology 
is whether, in dealing with the history of life, we 
must recognise in our inquiry the real individuality 
of living bodies and the possibility or necessity of 
separating the history of life from that of the universe 
in which it was developed. For if there is no more 
individuality in the evolution of life than in the 
history of rocks or the surface of the earth, then 
we may expect to be able eventually to regard that 
evolution as a complex of recurring changes, which 
are indeed separately discernible, but have no real 
being independent of the one great system of the 
universe. Their individuality is thus but apparent ; 
we happen to give them separate treatment. If, on 



EXPOSITION OF ANTINOMIES 97 

the other hand, their individuality is real, we are 
confronted with real change, which because real is 
unique, and displays no repetitions. We shall be 
inquiring into something which is like the history 
of our own consciousness, which we may hope will 
become intelligible when it is displayed before us 
and we reflect upon it ; we shall not, however, be 
able to predict its future just because we are dealing 
with a series in which there is no repetition. The 
reality of change is not inconsistent with intelligi- 
bility, but with prediction. An account of evolution, 
then, will be a history, but not in a mathematical 
sense an explanation, of what has happened. In 
the discussion on Psychophysical Parallelism, Berg- 
son has put very clearly the connection between the 
belief in the universal validity of the category of 
mechanism and the doctrine that there is no real 
individuality in nature, in these words : "If there is 
one science of nature (and Kant seems to have no 
doubt of it), if all phenomena and all objects are 
spread on one and the same plane, so as to produce 
an experience unique, continuous, and entirely on 
the surface (and such is the constant hypothesis of 
the Critique of Pure Reason), then there is only 
one kind of causality in the world, all phenomenal 
causality implies rigorous determination, and liberty 



98 THE PHILOSOPHY OF BERGSON 

must be sought for outside experience. But if 
there is not one science but several sciences of nature, 
if there is not one scientific determination but 
several scientific determinations of unequal rigor, 
then we must distinguish between different planes 
of experience ; experience is not simply on the 
surface, it extends into the depths ; finally it is 
possible by insensible transitions, without any sharp 
break, without quitting the field of facts, to go 
from physical necessity to moral freedom." * 

Now, in dealing with the facts of life we must 
in some sort accept evolution if we hold the rela- 
tions between the various forms of life to be 
intelligible at all ; we are not then dealing with 
what is immediately given as a single history which 
might correspond to the history of a single con- 
sciousness, but with the relations between different 
animals and different species. Yet these various 
forms of life present such common features that 
they can clearly be understood only when studied 
together. The method of studying life in the light 
of conscious individuality has the difficulty that any 
form of life unites in itself parts that may well 
claim to be individual, and that on the other hand 
no living thing is isolated. We seem to be dealing 

1 Bulletin de la Soc. Fran, de Phil., 1901, p. 63. 



EXPOSITION OF ANTINOMIES 99 

with a continuous process of life from germplasm 
to germplasm, a process in which the individuals 
are only intermediaries. Further, this process is not 
unilinear, but proceeds along different lines in 
different coexisting forms of life. These coexisting 
living forms are continually affecting one another 
in ways which can be described mechanically, and 
they are affected by their inorganic environment. 
Can we disregard the element of real individuality 
and growth in evolution altogether, and give up 
a psychological interpretation for a mechanical ? 
For a thoroughgoing mechanical explanation will 
deny the production of any new features in the 
process, and imply that all development was 
really contained in the earliest stages. That is 
clearly expressed in the passage which Bergson 
quotes from Huxley. " If the fundamental pro- 
position of evolution is true, namely that the 
entire world, animate and inanimate, is the result 
of the mutual interaction according to definite 
laws of forces possessed by the molecules which 
made up the primitive nebulosity of the universe ; 
then it is no less certain that the present actual 
world reposed potentially in the cosmic vapour, 
and that an intelligence, if great enough, could 

form his knowledge of the properties of the mole- 
10 



ioo THE PHILOSOPHY OF BERGSON 

cules of that vapour have predicted the state of 
the fauna of Great Britain in 1888 with as much 
certitude as we say what will happen to the vapour 
of our breath in a cold day in winter." 

Thus we have time explicitly denied. " The 
present reposed potentially in the cosmic vapour." 
Differences are mere differences in arrangements in 
molecules, and understanding is possibility of pre- 
diction. Living beings are no more separable or 
distinct from the general system of molecules than 
is anything else. In Bergson's words, " Radical 
mechanism implies a metaphysic where the totality 
of the real is given en bloc, and where the apparent 
duration of things expresses simply the infirmity 
of a mind which cannot know everything all at 
once." 1 

But is such a conception applicable to the facts 
of life ? In the first place, the present state of a 
living body does not find its explanation in the 
state immediately anterior, but in the whole past 
of the organism. If we study changes in growth, 
such as adolescence or old age, they are only under- 
stood in the light of the whole process with which 
they are continuous. Whereas in a complete me- 
chanical explanation you can find the present state 

1 Creative Evolution, p. 41. 



EXPOSITION OF ANTINOMIES 101 

contained in any one past state, these phenomena 
are inexplicable apart from the history of the indi- 
vidual organism — in other words, apart from a real 
period of time. Secondly, while it may be extremely 
difficult to define individuality, yet it is impossible 
to make any progress in biology without recognising 
it. The study of heredity, e.g. implies no doubt a 
continuity between different individuals of the same 
species which prevents any one of them being re- 
garded as completely individual, but the inquiry is 
altogether impossible unless it treats that series as 
a real one, and distinct from the conditions which 
effect it. Heredity implies a certain common sys- 
tematisation of the parts of the structure in all 
the members of the series. The study of heredity 
must begin with the recognition of some such con- 
tinuity, i.e. with the recognition of individuality. 
Any explanation, then, which eliminates time and 
with it real individuality is, even from the scientific 
point of view, necessarily inadequate. 

Considerations of this kind are not new. Theo- 
retical dissatisfaction with a mechanical account of 
life is as old as the Phce&o, but mechanism still 
holds its place largely because of the obvious un- 
satisfactoriness of the suggested alternative theories. 
The common criticism of mechanism is based on 



102 THE PHILOSOPHY OF BERGSON 

the principle that life processes can only be explained 
in terms of the end, the final or highest form at 
which the rest of the process was aiming. The 
process itself must be explained through purpose. 
But as life is still developing, the end which governs 
it cannot be merely the highest form that has 
existed, but something beyond that. If we examine 
what is involved in this conception of purpose, we 
shall see that the end which is the explanation of 
the process must be regarded as apart from and 
prior to the process as we know it. The process is 
only the unrolling in time of what without it is 
eternally real and self-sufficing. Plato, the earliest 
great critic of mechanism, regarded the Ideas as 
having such a superior and prior reality to their 
manifestations. Such a teleology is always open to 
this objection, that if the end of the process is 
already real the process is superfluous. What kind 
of explanation can be given for the reality unfold- 
ing itself in time ? On the other hand, if the end 
is not already real and separable from the process, 
how can it be supposed to be effective? more 
especially how can it be any explanation of the 
present process ? For if the present be the ex- 
planation of the past, must not the future be the 
explanation of the present ? 



EXPOSITION OF ANTINOMIES 103 

Bergson's criticism of teleology is that, as 
commonly held, it makes time unreal just as much 
as mechanism does. For it reduces everything to 
the realisation of a programme already drawn up. 
There is thus nothing really new : apparent new- 
ness is the manifestation in existence of what in 
some other way was already real, and that mani- 
festation teleology explains as little as mechanism 
explained the only change it recognised — the change 
in order. Such teleology is only " mechanism from 
the other end." The impulsion comes from the 
future instead of from the past, but otherwise there 
is no difference between them. Some writers have 
tried to explain teleology by confining it to indi- 
viduals, and regarding the result of the whole pro- 
cess as the mechanical interaction of the conscious 
purposes of individuals and their environment. 
That explanation breaks down because, as we saw, 
although the study of life forces us to recognise 
individuality, it also forces us to recognise that any 
individual is at one and the same time an organism 
whose parts have individuality and a member of a 
larger whole. There is in nature no purely in- 
ternal teleology. This attempt to combine the 
two categories, to recognise individuals as being in 
regard to their parts organic and in regard to each 



104 THE PHILOSOPHY OF BERGSON 

other parts of mechanical system, cannot be made 
to fit the facts. 

This difficulty we have already seen to be inherent 
in the application of the notion of the conscious life 
to the general evolution of life. If this application 
is to be successful, it must get over the difficulty of 
individuality, and must also see that in its application 
it preserves the reality of time. Now this teleology, 
which is only mechanism backwards, comes from 
an imperfect apprehension of conscious experience. 
It takes as typical of that experience a purposive 
action where the end can be conceived and de- 
scribed independently of its realisation. This is 
the case in manufacture. For efficient manufac- 
ture we have to know what we want to make 
before it is made. That is, our end can be 
described as being like something else. We must 
know how the end can be produced, and we can 
do that only by relying on the law of causation, 
that like causes have like effects. We regard the 
end either as identical with something the law of 
whose production we understand, or as analysable 
into things of that kind. We can construct the 
end, then, by pulling a model to pieces and recon- 
structing it bit by bit. The more efficient our 
manufacture becomes the more it regards its end as 



EXPOSITION OF ANTINOMIES 105 

a combination of standardised parts, the more it sees 
in manufacture and in all purpose a new putting 
together of old things. Hence we easily get the 
notion that in purposive action we can separate 
the plan from its realisation : for the plan is only 
the scheme of a new order or arrangement of 
parts which already exist. Such a teleology is 
clearly mechanism inverted, for it is based on the 
essential principle of mechanism, the denial of all 
individuality and the assumption that all wholes 
may be regarded as aggregates or combinations of 
parts whose nature can be treated as identical whether 
inside or outside the whole. 

But such a result of an analysis of manu- 
facture does not apply to conduct, inasmuch as 
in conduct actions are not merely repetitions or 
combinations of repeatable parts, but are individual 
and have individual worth. Conduct cannot there- 
fore be regarded as the execution of a plan : for 
there can be no means of representing by a plan 
the action before it is completed. This is most 
manifestly the case in art. There we have pur- 
posive action issuing in the production of some- 
thing which is essentially individual. The plan 
or purpose which is stateable before a work of 
art is produced is entirely inadequate to the end 



106 THE PHILOSOPHY OF BERGSON 

realised by the artist. That can never be described 
as the execution of a stateable purpose. The full 
purpose can only be known in its realisation. 

Thus the mistake made by radical teleology is 
that it regards the coming of the impulsion from 
the future rather than from the past as the chief 
difference between purpose and mechanism. Really 
the essential difference lies in this : that in pur- 
posive action the process and its result cannot be 
regarded as aggregates or arrangements of parts. 
Hence if we are to apply the psychological inter- 
pretation to the evolution of life, because it alone 
recognises time and individuality, we must realise 
that we cannot expect from it prediction or antici- 
pation, that it is dealing with a process which 
can be understood when it has happened but not 
before. In Bergson's words : " Life progresses and 
endures in time. Of course when once the road 
has been travelled, we can glance over it, mark 
its direction, note this in psychological terms, and 
speak as if there had been pursuit of an end. But 
the human spirit has nothing to say of the road 
which is going to be travelled, because the road 
has been created "pari passu with the act of travelling 
over it, being nothing but the direction of this act 
itself. Evolution, then, should give to each stage 



EXPOSITION OF ANTINOMIES 107 

a psychological interpretation, which is, from our 
point of view, the best explanation ; but this ex- 
planation has validity and even significance only in a 
retrospective sense. The teleological interpretation, 
such as we shall propose it, must not be taken for 
an anticipation of the future. It is a vision of the 
past in the light of the present." ' 

Such general considerations, based on the fact 
that all biology has to begin by recognising em- 
pirically the unique nature of life and by using the 
individuality of species as the basis of explanation, 
lead in themselves to the refutation of any theory 
which denies the reality of time or regards the 
individual as a mere aggregate. But in spite of 
this the upholder of mechanism might maintain 
that its explanation supersedes and transcends the 
individuality which biology begins by recognising, 
and the support of the prophetic claims of 
triumph for the mechanical theory come from the 
success with which that theory has already been 
applied to and has already broken down the 
individuality of species as they seemed to be 
presented by nature. These scientists hold that 
all that we should believe in is the possibility 
of extending this process, and, as we saw in dis- 

1 Creative Evolution^ p. 54. 



108 THE PHILOSOPHY OF BERGSON 

cussing determinism, no answer to that claim can 
be satisfactory which is based on the present in- 
capacity of science to explain everything or to go 
further than it has gone. Such arguments are 
rightly repelled as mere obscurantism and disbelief 
in the powers of human knowledge. The only 
valid answer is that the facts as already explained 
are inconsistent with the ideal of mechanism ; that 
the breaking down of the old belief in fixed species 
and acceptance of their transformation leads not 
to a denial of individuality altogether, but to the 
view that individuals and species are related to one 
another as are the parts of an individual organism. 

That the theory of mechanism, and the several 
applications of the concept of purpose we have 
criticised, furnish satisfactory explanations of some 
of the essential facts, but are insufficient to explain 
them all, will become evident if we examine the use 
made of the notion of adaptation in evolution. 

What is ordinarily known as orthodox Darwin- 
ianism, though the view was not held rigidly by 
Darwin, has a clearly mechanical notion of adapta- 
tion. For it supposes variations to be accidental in 
the sense that they are not influenced by the purpose 
which they are to serve. The preservation of the 
favourable and useful variations is the work of 



EXPOSITION OF ANTINOMIES 109 

environment. Adaptation is effected by the auto- 
matic elimination of the unfit. But that the varia- 
tion should be the result of a mechanical cause 
operating on mechanical material, involves this great 
difficulty. The variation cannot survive and become 
effective in the process of elimination unless con- 
ditions are such that it is immediately " favourable." 
A small accidental variation, therefore, to become 
effective would have to wait until along with a 
succession of similar accidental changes it had 
resulted in the construction of an organ which 
would aid survival. This sounds improbable, but 
given sufficient length of time, not impossible. But 
the problem becomes more difficult when we re- 
member that we have to explain the identity in 
structure in organs of extraordinary complication 
along divergent lines of evolution. That an accu- 
mulation of accidental variations, on which selection 
cannot operate, should by quite different paths 
produce an eye of more or less identical structure 
in both molluscs and vertebrates seems entirely im- 
possible. It is at least not an hypothesis by which 
to explain the regular and common features of 
animal life. 

On the other hand, if we consider the parts of a 
complex structure like the eye to have been brought 



no THE PHILOSOPHY OF BERGSON 

together in accordance with a pre-existing plan, this 
theory throws no light on the gradual development 
which it is possible to exhibit from the pigment- 
spot affected by light to the human eye. Both 
theories have this in common, that they regard a 
complex structure like the eye as the aggregate of its 
parts, and suppose that its production involves the 
bringing together of all these separate parts. 
Actually the development of the eye from a 
pigment-spot affected by light is not a process of 
addition which starts from nothing and ends when 
all the parts are brought together. It is a series, all 
the stages of which are complete, and can function 
(you never have half an eye). We have a growth 
of complexity, but a complexity that comes not by 
addition but by a complete simple function com- 
plicating itself. The fact that we can exhibit such 
a continuous development from the earliest stages is 
equally fatal to the mechanical theory and to the 
notion of purposive putting together. 

Actually, too, variations do not seem to be of 
the minute kind implied in the first theory. They 
affect the whole organism, or at least the whole 
organ. Recent research suggests that adaptations 
arise more or less suddenly and that they are 
complete at once. Supposing that the initiating 



EXPOSITION OF ANTINOMIES in 

cause of the variation be mechanical — as, for example, 
when changes of temperature may cause chrysalis of 
the same kind to produce different butterflies — yet 
the details of the variation have no relation to the 
cause, and are only to be explained by the character 
of the particular organism reacting to the stimulus of 
the external cause. If we still call this adaptation, we 
must realise that ,we are using that word in a different 
sense which is no longer compatible with mechanism. 
Adaptation in a mechanical sense is exemplified 
when water assumes the shape of a glass into which 
it is poured, but in that case the particular result 
comes entirely from the character of the glass. It 
is a different kind of adaptation when the result is 
only explicable through the character of that which 
is adapted. The solution of a geometrical problem 
is adapted to its conditions, but the conditions in no 
way produce the adaptation. Considerations of this 
kind have led many scientists to bring back the 
notion of some kind of consciousness at work. The 
living being tries to adapt itself to the conditions in 
which it has to live. Adaptation depends upon 
effort and some kind of will. But that adaptation 
should be a form of individual effort — one very 
special kind of individual action — seems to involve 
the transmission of acquired characteristics in a way 



ii2 THE PHILOSOPHY OF BERGSON 

for which there is no warrant. No explanation of 
evolution is satisfactory which makes development 
depend on the efforts of isolated individuals. We 
come back, then, to the view of variation which the 
empirical study of the facts seems to support. We 
find that variations are sudden, not coming about 
by the adding of parts together ; that they are not 
the work of individual effort, rather the species seems 
to pass through periods of variation. It seems, then, 
that development is not addition from without, but 
increase in complexity of what was always an indi- 
vidual whole ; and that yet the whole of evolution 
can only be explained if we regard all living things 
though individual as members or manifestations of 
one life, so that the whole is in some sense an indi- 
vidual. Just as we can only explain bees through 
the hive, it would seem that the development of a 
species is really made by the species, the species 
being a real individual, not just a collection of 
individuals ; and that species itself is related in 
some such way to other forms of life. When we 
try to work out what these suggestions imply, we 
come to questions of degree which can only be 
answered by a much greater empirical knowledge. 
We can say much more clearly what life is not than 
what it is. It is enough in the meantime to notice 



EXPOSITION OF ANTINOMIES 113 

that in the successful explanations of evolutionary 
change the strictly mechanical sense of adaptation 
has been given up. So far from reducing life to 
merely a part of the system of the universe, they 
view life as a process with real and distinct changes 
— changes which are not the result of mechanical 
environment, but seem to be changes in the history 
of the species. The life of the species is looked 
upon as something having its own history or dura- 
tion ; something, therefore, whose individuality is 
involved in its explanation. 

But if the evolution of life be thus interpreted 
in the light of consciousness, there must always be 
this difference between an account of evolution and 
psychology, that in the former we are dealing with 
the relations of individuals which are related in 
space ; which, therefore, while they cannot be 
adequately explained by mechanical terms, do act 
and react upon one another partly by mechanical 
means. The elimination of the " unfit " by the in- 
sufficiency of food is an example of that. Hence our 
consideration of the difficulties of biological method 
make it essential that we should understand not 
only the inadequacy of a mechanical explanation, but 
its partial adequacy and validity. The mathematical 
explanation is as essential as the non-mathematical. 

H 



CHAPTER III 

SPACE, TIME, AND MOTION 

We saw that Bergson in his preface to Time and 
Free Will attributed the unfruitfulness of the dis- 
cussion between Determinists and Indeterminists to 
a " confusion of duration with extensity, of succes- 
sion with simultaneity, of quality with quantity." 
We might sum this list of concepts to be dis- 
tinguished as time and space. For throughout his 
work Bergson is insisting on the distinction 
between the nature of our experience of time and 
our experience of space. The first he describes 
as duration, though the English word is a mis- 
leading translation of the French la duree. It is 
what each of us apprehends when he reflects on his 
own conscious life, a process of change in which 
none of the parts are external to one another, 
but interpenetrating, where the past is carried on 
into the present, where therefore there is no 
repetition, but a continual creation of what is 
new. Space or extensity is that whose parts 



SPACE, TIME, AND MOTION 115 

are external to one another, and can be simul- 
taneously apprehended ; in space position can be 
distinguished from what occupies a position, and 
identity of order and recurrence of the same thing 
in the same position are possible. The result of 
the analysis of intensive quantity in the first chapter 
was to distinguish between the real complexity of 
psychical states and the quantity belonging to 
external phenomena with which these might be 
associated. The criticism of " scientific " psychology 
was directed against the attempt to regard psychical 
facts as though they were external to one another 
and spatial. The result of the criticism of theories 
of the relation of soul and body in the article 
on Psychophysiological Parallelism, and in Matter 
and Memory , shows that such relations must be 
expressed, not in terms of space, but of time. 
That criticism and the examination of biological 
methods emphasised the same general contention, 
that in the sciences of life spatial terms are mis- 
leading and confusing, as are scientific methods 
based on spatial experience ; and the conceptions of 
real change and individuality, as known in experience 
of and reflection upon our own conscious life, must 
take their place. 

These distinctions, however, have their dangers 



n6 THE PHILOSOPHY OF BERGSON 

A rigid dualism, which would put on one side 
consciousness, time, succession, and quality, and on 
the other the inorganic, space, simultaneity, and 
quantity, will fit neither the facts of psychology 
nor of the empirical sciences which deal with 
external phenomena. We noticed, in examining 
the criticism of biological methods, that in that 
science at least we are dealing with living beings 
which are in spatial relations to one another, 
though they may also be in relations which can- 
not be expressed spatially. We have suggested at 
the end of our account of Bergson's analysis of 
intensive quantity that he tends to ignore the 
importance of simple qualitative differences, and 
the part which the possibility of recognising degrees 
of likeness and unlikeness between them plays in 
our knowledge of external phenomena. Bergson 
himself, in the beginning of Matter and Memory, 
as we have seen, shows how impossible it is to take 
by itself either of the two systems which he describes, 
and in the end of that work he makes a most 
interesting attempt to show how the dualism can 
be overcome. For, obviously, if we make the 
distinction of quality and quantity correspond to 
a distinction of internal and external experience, 
apply one set of concepts to conscious life as we 



SPACE, TIME, AND MOTION 117 

are ourselves aware of it and another to what is 
outside us in space, we are giving this dualism a 
spatial interpretation after all ; and while Bergson 
begins in Time and Free Will with a distinction 
between the psychical states and external pheno- 
mena, in his other works he emphasises more 
clearly that all real changes are inexplicable in 
purely quantitative terms, and the criterion of the 
applicability of concepts borrowed from reflection 
on conscious life rather than from mathematics is 
seen ultimately to depend upon whether or not in 
our inquiries we have to take account of the real 
articulation and individuality of things. 

In parts of his writings, and especially in Time 
and Free Will, where the two systems are often 
separated more sharply than his own reconcilia- 
tion of them would warrant, Bergson seems to 
begin by taking for granted what he is afterwards 
concerned to refute — the mathematical conception 
of external phenomena, which from the time of 
Descartes has been prominent in much philoso- 
phical and scientific thinking, and to hold in the 
meantime that those scientists are right who insist 
that all science implies a mechanical theory of the 
universe, and that ultimately science will become 
a universal mathematic. He assumes that logic 



n8 THE PHILOSOPHY OF BERGSON 

which has been constructed from reflection upon 
the physical sciences expresses the same mathe- 
matical ideal. Starting from this position, he is, 
in Time and Free Will, careful to point out that 
psychical facts are not capable of mathematical 
treatment, as though they therefore fell outside 
of the scope of science and of logic, and as 
though there were two spheres of reality, the 
sphere of duration and the sphere of space. He 
afterwards goes on to show that movement also 
is misinterpreted by quantitative treatment. That 
at first produces the impression that movement is 
therefore subjective or part of our conscious experi- 
ence only, and emphasises the difficulty of regarding 
reality as divided into two spheres — of consciousness, 
where change and movement and quality are real, 
and of space, where only the simultaneous and the 
quantitative exist. It is only in Matter and Memory 
that he brings out the result of this argument as to 
the nature of motion, namely that since there are 
real movements in the external world, the mathe- 
matical conception of reality must be an inadequate 
account of external phenomena also. Thus in his 
final doctrine he criticises the scientific assumptions 
of a universal mathematic and the logic which is 
based on such assumptions, insisting that the non- 



SPACE, TIME, AND MOTION 119 

mathematical methods of inquiry which are alone 
adequate to the apprehension of conscious life are 
equally essential to a full understanding of any 
reality. 

The result of this movement of thought is that 
there is a certain inconsistency or ambiguity in 
Bergson's account of time and space. In Time and 
Free Will they are treated as the characteristics of 
two separate spheres of reality, as though time and 
quality were intelligible apart from space, and space 
were intelligible as timeless and without qualitative 
differences. This rigid distinction breaks down 
when Bergson comes to consider motion, but the 
fact that the distinction was originally made to 
separate the treatment of psychical facts from 
physical seems to influence his account of non- 
mathematical inquiries throughout. It is therefore 
of great importance in the appreciation of what 
Bergson says about the inadequacy of scientific 
thinking to remember that he means scientific 
thinking as some scientists have described it, a 
universal mathematics in which all differences of 
quality have been eliminated ; and that one of the 
most important results of his criticism is rather to 
modify the ideal of scientific inquiry than to remove 
certain spheres of reality entirely from its scope. 



120 THE PHILOSOPHY OF BERGSON 

In this movement of thought the concept of 
motion, as we have seen, plays an especially im- 
portant part. We shall therefore first follow 
Bergson's connection of number with space and 
his contrast of duration and extensity, and then 
ask what modification of this contrast the facts 
of motion necessitate. 

The first chapter of Time and Free Will was 
concerned, as we saw, with an analysis of states of 
consciousness, with the object of showing that such 
states cannot be measured in terms of one another, 
and that such numbering and measuring as is pos- 
sible in regard to them had always reference to their 
external causes or occasions, not to the states them- 
selves. On the other hand, we saw that psychical 
states could be directly compared as regards their 
multiplicity, but that such multiplicity was not 
measurable. 

In the second chapter Bergson proceeds to ela- 
borate this contrast between two kinds of multipli- 
city by connecting more closely measurement or 
number with space. The question before him in 
the discussion is, as he says, "Does the multiplicity 
of our conscious states bear the slightest resemblance 
to the multiplicity of the units of a number ? " 1 

1 Time and Free Will, p. 9. 



SPACE, TIME, AND MOTION 121 

He begins the answer to that question by asking 
what is implied in the latter multiplicity ? Kant, 
when considering the same question, drew attention 
to the part played by time in counting, and argued 
that all measurement means a synthesis of successive 
parts. The parts must be run through and held 
together. The number involves a mental synthesis, 
an intuition of the complex result of successive acts 
of consciousness. Later writers, accepting this posi- 
tion, and assuming that time is the basis of quantity 
and number, have held that the experience of suc- 
cession is all that is necessary for the conception of 
quantity, and have therefore not unnaturally tried 
to deduce a notion so essentially quantitative as space 
from this experience. Lotze, for example, tries to 
explain the perception of space from the perception 
of a succession of local signs, and many modern 
psychologists have followed him. It is not hard, on 
examination of any such explanations, to show that 
they are fallacious, and assume the space which they 
try to explain, and this suggests that we should 
examine whether the notion of quantity itself does 
not assume space. 

Now Kant, in asserting that number implies a 
mental synthesis, is concerned with the question, 
" What must we do in order to count ? " His 



122 THE PHILOSOPHY OF BERGSON 

answer is that we must be able to run through the 
units and hold them together. If we are only 
asking what we do when we count up, say to 
twenty, there would be nothing more to be said. 
But we may also ask, What do we mean by a sum, 
or by saying that there are twenty objects? We 
want to know not only what is implied in the act 
of counting, but also what is implied in things being 
summable. In order to know when we have counted 
all the parts of a sum, we must have over against 
the successive noticing of units of which we are to 
make a mental synthesis the whole simultaneously 
apprehended, if only in order to know where to stop. 
It is true that we must count successively, but we 
must also perceive simultaneously. All adding, 
then, implies a multiplicity simultaneously appre- 
hended, or regarded as simultaneously apprehensible. 
In time we can perceive a succession only, " but not 
an addition, i.e. a succession which culminates in a 
sum." 1 A sum implies the simultaneous existence 
of the parts. Unless we apprehend in a single 
act the whole to be summed, no counting of suc- 
cessive units can produce a sum. For that we must 
know when to stop counting. But any reference 
to a simultaneous multiplicity is a reference to 

1 Time and Free Will, p. 79. 



SPACE, TIME, AND MOTION 123 

space. It is of the essence of space that we perceive 
in it a number of things at the same time. What else 
is implied in such terms as " outside one another," 
or " external" ? In counting things we regard them 
for the purpose of the sum as qualitatively identical, 
but capable of being separately discernible, and at 
the same time forming a whole, and this too seems 
necessarily to imply space. In Bergson's words, 
" It is scarcely possible to give any other definition 
of space : space is what enables us to distinguish 
a number of identical and simultaneous sensations 
from one another : it is thus a principle of differen- 
tiation other than that of qualitative differentiation, 
and consequently it is a reality with no quality." 1 

These considerations Bergson reinforces by 
noting another characteristic of a sum — its infinite 
divisibility. All counting is a definite mental 
synthesis, and every number as the result of such 
a synthesis is discontinuous with every other. But 
when we consider any definite number we regard it 
as a sum which could be reached in an indefinite 
number of ways. What is that but to realise that 
the sum reached in counting any aggregate is deter- 
mined not by the mental operation of counting, 
but by the multiplicity simultaneously perceived 

1 Time and Free Will, p. 95. 



i2 4 THE PHILOSOPHY OF BERGSON 

which has been there all the time ? And in that 
multiplicity, though there may be particular pur- 
poses which guide our selection, we yet might have 
chosen units in any way ; the sum remains the same, 
for it is given all at once as a continuous whole ; and 
thus we regard it as infinitely divisible. The in- 
finite divisibility of the sum is another mark of its 
spatial character. Space is that which can be divided 
in an indefinite number of ways. 

These considerations do not lead to a denial of the 
importance of time in counting, but they show that 
measuring involves space. The act of counting 
involves time, but the nature of what is measured 
— that which has the number or forms the sum — is 
spatial. We have already found an instance of this 
in the way in which we measure psychical states or 
qualitative differences. For it has been shown that, 
in all cases where we seem to be measuring a quality 
or a psychical state, we are really measuring the 
extensive quantity of its effect or occasion. But 
the possibility, here instanced, of transferring the 
quantity of an extension to something in its own 
nature not quantitative is important. It has its 
advantages, but it may obviously be misleading, and 
Bergson is emphatic as to the confusion which has 
been caused by what he calls the spatialising of time. 



SPACE, TIME, AND MOTION 125 

We have noticed already how attempts at a quanti- 
tative psychology, or a quantitative account of the 
relations between soul and body, represent mental 
life as an aggregate or sum of external elements. 
Bergson's contention is that not only has the nature 
of psychical states been misrepresented in this way, 
but that time itself is thereby misunderstood. Time 
is represented as a homogeneous medium like space, 
but of one dimension, the moments of which are 
of the nature of points in space. Yet this is time as 
we measure it, not time as we experience it, and time 
is measured only through spatial relations. Time 
as experienced has the multiplicity of psychical states, 
and is not something which can be counted. As 
when mental life is split up into an aggregate of 
separate elements, it loses its unity and becomes 
unmeaning, so our experience of any time-process, 
when represented as a sum or number of moments, 
loses the unity which is of its essence. The con- 
trast is best illustrated by the difference between 
hearing a tune and counting the number of different 
notes in it as they occur. If we count the notes, 
each note of the tune is taken, but by itself, separate 
from the rest ; the tune has gone. 

If, then, the process itself cannot be counted, 
what is the spatial relation which we count ? We 



126 THE PHILOSOPHY OF BERGSON 

can apply measurement to our psychical states and 
to time-processes because the psychical and the 
physical are not two worlds of which we have 
separate experience. Every psychical fact, if it is 
a factor in an experience of succession and duration, 
is an element also in a perceived simultaneity — is 
part both of an experience of time and of space. 
Thus, what we do in measuring our psychical states 
is not to imagine a spatial relation which they 
do not possess, but to eliminate their temporal 
relation. We said that quantitative psychology was 
a study of correspondences. All measurement of 
time is a counting of such correspondences or 
simultaneities. We mark time by the concurrence 
of an event, whether it be our own action or some 
event of the outside world, with a certain simul- 
taneity in space. We count time by the repetition 
of such simultaneities. We are concerned only with 
the simultaneities, not with the real nature of the 
processes which we measure by them. We may 
therefore come to call two durations equal, which, 
as we directly experienced them, were of the most 
different character and complexity. For in counting 
time we are concerned only with the simultaneity 
which marked the beginning of the duration and 
that which marked its end. Hence, in phrases like 



SPACE, TIME, AND MOTION 127 

* The time passed quickly " or " The time dragged," 
we are expressing the difference between what we 
actually experience and the uniform recurrence of 
simultaneities in space by which we measure time, 
and which marks the limits of that experience. In 
counting we are only concerned with such limits. 
That a clock should be accurate, it is only essential 
that the hands of it and another clock should get 
to the corresponding points marked on the dials 
simultaneously ; or, if we take clocks in general, that, 
starting from one point at the dial, it should come 
to the same position again simultaneously with an 
astronomical recurrence of the position of the earth, 
and that such a movement should be uniformly 
divided. It is not essential that the movement 
should really be of a uniform nature. It is only 
essential that the hand of the clock should coincide 
with the positions marked on the dial uniformly. 
A grandfather clock, whose second hand lurches on 
to each point on the second dial, may mark as 
accurate time as a clock whose second hand has an 
even movement. As Bergson points out, the treat- 
ment of time and of all change and velocity in 
mechanics is of this nature. " Treatises on mechanics 
explain that duration cannot be defined, but only 
the equality of two durations," and that is defined 



128 THE PHILOSOPHY OF BERGSON 

by reference to space. " Two intervals of time are 
equal where two identical bodies, in identical con- 
ditions at the beginning of each of these intervals, 
and subject to the same actions and influences of 
every kind, have traversed the same space at the 
end of these intervals." x 

Such measurement of time is based, as we have 
seen, on the fact that every element in a time- 
process is also an element in a space simultaneity. 
As measurement, therefore, it is perfectly valid. The 
mistake arises when the process is thought of as 
actually a sum or aggregate of simultaneities. For 
if we eliminate real time altogether, we get a number 
of simultaneities whose relation to one another we 
cannot understand. It is possible to mark the 
simultaneities between elements in a time-process 
and events in space, only because we experience 
both the time-process of succession and spatial 
simultaneities ; but if we eliminate the former, and 
imagine that time is the sum of the simultaneities, 
then all process and change becomes unmeaning. 
For the relation between the simultaneities is taken 
to be that of the parts of the sum to the whole, 
but that, as we have seen in considering the relation 
of counting to space, is itself a simultaneity. As the 

1 Time and Free Will, p. 115. 



SPACE, TIME, AND MOTION 129 

relation of the parts that make up a sum is neces- 
sary, since for them to constitute a sum the whole 
must have been there to begin with, so the relation 
of the simultaneities which are now taken as in their 
aggregate constituting change must be conceived 
of as necessary, as somehow all given at once. The 
spatial metaphors, such as " contained "or " involved 
in," by which we express the relation of present to 
past, bear witness to this. But such a conception 
worked out would imply that change was impossible. 
We can only understand change by realising that it 
is incapable of spatial expression, and is something 
whose reality is only understood as a time-process. 

As this fallacious conception of process, which 
underlies much philosophy and science, has arisen 
from the confusion of space with time, of simul- 
taneity with succession, Bergson is careful to separate 
these and to conceive the nature of each separately. 
In our ordinary experience space and time are both 
implied. Science, in measuring change, eliminates 
time : Bergson proposes, if we are to understand 
the nature of psychical process, that we should 
eliminate space. Hence we have the contrast be- 
tween the two spheres of space and time which 
Bergson thus describes in an analysis of the ex- 
perience of watching the strokes of a pendulum. 



130 THE PHILOSOPHY OF BERGSON 

" Outside of me, in space, there is never more than 
a single position of the hand and the pendulum, 
for nothing is left of the past positions. Within 
myself a process of organisation or interpenetration 
of conscious states is going on, which constitutes 
true duration. . . . Thus, within our ego, there is 
succession without mutual externality ; outside the 
ego, in pure space, mutual externality without succes- 
sion ; mutual externality, since the present oscillation 
is radically distinct from the previous oscillation 
which no longer exists, but no succession, since 
succession exists solely for a conscious spectator 
who keeps the past in mind and sets the two 
oscillations or their symbols side by side in an 
auxiliary space. Now if we try to determine the 
exact part played by the real and imaginary in this 
very complex process, this is what we find. There 
is a real space without duration, in which pheno- 
mena appear and disappear simultaneously with our 
state of consciousness. There is a real duration, 
the heterogeneous moments of which permeate one 
another : each moment, however, can be brought 
into relation with a state of the external world 
which is contemporaneous with it, and can be 
separated from the other moments in consequence 
of this very process." * 

1 Time and Free Will, p. 108. 



SPACE, TIME, AND MOTION 131 

Here, therefore, we have the contrast between 
consciousness, change, and quality on the one hand 
and space, simultaneity, and quantity on the other, 
which we noticed at the beginning of this chapter. 
We must consider the conception of space and time 
which this view implies, and then ask how it is effec- 
ted when we come to the consideration of motion. 

The two characteristics of space on which measur- 
ing is based are, as we have seen, its simultaneity 
and its infinite divisibility. Space, according to 
Bergson, is the conception of an empty homo- 
geneous medium: "It is a principle of differentia- 
tion other than that of qualitative differentiation, 
and consequently it is a reality with no quality." 1 

How can such a reality be the basis of counting 
and measurement ? For clearly it cannot be per- 
ceived. Bergson follows Kant in giving space an 
existence apart from its content, and for much the 
same reason, that all perception of external objects 
implies space to begin with, or at least implies the 
perception of a simultaneous multiplicity. But, 
taking this view, he is confronted with a difficulty, 
familiar to students of Kant. How can we under- 
stand the relation between such a homogeneous 
medium and the objects that occupy it ? If space 

1 Time and Free Will, p. 95- 



132 THE PHILOSOPHY OF BERGSON 

is prior to objects, how can we say that a particular 
object has such and such spatial determinations ? 
Bergson tries to get over this by making a dis- 
tinction between our perception of extensity and 
our conception of space. Extensity with concrete 
directions is given in immediate perception, "but 
the conception of a homogeneous medium is some- 
thing far more extraordinary, being a kind of reaction 
against that heterogeneity which is the very ground 
of our experience. . . . What we must say is that 
we have to do with two different kinds of reality, 
the one heterogeneous, that of sensible qualities, 
the other homogeneous, namely space. This latter, 
clearly conceived by the human intellect, enables us 
to use clean-cut distinctions, to count, to abstract, 
and perhaps also to speak." * 

What kind of existence has this clearly conceived 
reality ? Bergson at times seems to regard it as 
something which we can conceive as separate from 
external qualities : for he goes on to argue that 
time, conceived as a homogeneous medium, must 
be identical with space. " For homogeneity here 
consisting in the absence of every quality, it is hard 
to see how two forms of the homogeneous can be 
distinguished from one another." This argument 

1 Time and Free Will, p. 97. 



SPACE, TIME, AND MOTION 133 

presupposes that space is conceived of as an inde- 
pendent reality. It is not conclusive, for when we 
find that Bergson goes so far as to call the directions 
or dimensions of space qualitative differences, and 
therefore separable from pure space, we come to see 
that it is hard to distinguish such a reality from 
another homogeneous medium because it is hard to 
distinguish it from blank nothing. Take away the 
possibility of determinations in space, and space is 
nothing. As such it cannot be the basis of counting. 
Spatial determinations are impossible unless we can 
take points in space. It is true that we must regard 
space as indefinitely divisible ; but an indefinite divisi- 
bility implies that each division is made in definite 
ways, and that units can be provisionally taken in 
it, and any definite division or system of provisional 
units that can be added implies some kind of 
heterogeneity. Things can be added because they 
are external to one another in space and because 
for the purposes of the sum their qualitative hetero- 
geneity can be ignored. The notion of quantity 
and of relations in a homogeneous medium can 
be applied to them in so far as they may be 
regarded as identical ; but if objects were completely 
identical, if there were no qualitative differences, 
no discrimination would be possible at all and 



i 3 4 THE PHILOSOPHY OF BERGSON 

therefore no counting. Without counting and 
discrimination we could not have the conception 
of that which is merely divisible. We can think 
of qualitative differences being more and more negli- 
gible, becoming more and more like mathematical 
points, but if all qualitative differences entirely 
disappeared, spatial relations would disappear with 
them. Hence the conception of pure space is a 
limiting conception, based upon the possibility of 
relatively ignoring qualitative differences, which at 
its limit is equal to nothing. If the same is true 
of time, mutatis mutandis, time and space may be 
homogeneous media and yet sufficiently distinguish- 
able as the limits of duration and extensity ; as 
the limits of two mathematical functions may be 
nothing and yet distinguishable in terms of the 
functions which they limit. 

In Matter and Memory Bergson seems to take 
this latter view of space and time. He regards 
them not as realities existent by themselves, but as 
conceived from the necessities of action. " Abstract 
space is at bottom nothing but the mental diagram 
of infinite divisibility." The importance of this 
new suggestion, that the notion of conceived space 
is the result of the exigencies of action, we shall 
examine later. However it arises, here we must 



SPACE, TIME, AND MOTION 135 

again insist that no homogeneous medium alone can 
be the basis of counting. Counting implies some 
kind of qualitative difference, and we need for it 
not only a " schema of infinite divisibility," but a 
heterogeneous reality in which divisions can be made, 
because divisions already exist. It is true that the 
nature of number itself implies the qualitative 
identity of its units, as space implies a homogeneous 
medium. But neither this homogeneous medium 
nor the qualitatively identical units of number can 
be apprehended apart from our experience of the 
heterogeneous. All perception of external objects 
implies space — implies, that is, that we can regard 
only the spatial character of the objects, their 
relative position, and ignore their qualitative dif- 
ferences. But if we hypostatise this implication 
into a homogeneous medium without qualitative 
difference, and make that in its independence the 
basis of quantitative calculation, we find that it is 
indistinguishable from nothing. 

We have in this argument been criticising the 
separation which Bergson makes between quality 
and quantity. In so doing we only anticipate his 
criticism of that conception of a purely quantitative 
external world which is implied in much scientific 
thinking. 



136 THE PHILOSOPHY OF BERGSON 

We shall be doing the same in the further 
criticism which must be made of Bergson's separa- 
tion between duration and simultaneity, expressed 
in the words we have already quoted, " Thus within 
our ego, there is succession without mutual ex- 
ternality: outside the ego, in pure space, mutual 
externality without succession." * 

Our perception of space implies simultaneity, 
and all counting, selecting, or other forms of 
mental synthesis imply the perception of a simul- 
taneous multiplicity over against the succession of 
our mental acts. At the same time no perception 
is itself instantaneous. All perception takes some 
time, and therefore we perceive as simultaneous not 
what we perceive in an infinitely small moment 
of time (such a description is only a way of 
trying to regard perception as timeless), but what 
we are aware of as being continuously present 
during our perception. The simultaneous implies 
the permanent which implies a time-process in the 
subject which perceives it. Still the simultaneity 
is not itself a time-process and no summing or rela- 
tions of simultaneities can constitute time. Hence 
no account of change is possible which begins 
with what is timeless or simultaneous, and tries 

1 Time and Free Will, p. 108. 



SPACE, TIME, AND MOTION 137 

to explain change in terms of that — as is done, 
for example, in the Kantian account of substance, 
and in all thinking where the successive stages 
which may be discriminated in any process of 
change are taken as in their aggregate constitut- 
ing the change. Bergson rightly contrasts with 
such a reality change and process as we actually 
experience it in our conscious life. If our percep- 
tion of space is timeless, we must either try to 
express motion and change as a sum of simul- 
taneities, in which case we misrepresent its nature, 
or we must make motion or change psychical, in 
which case we deny its objectivity. But it is quite 
clear that we can distinguish between change in our 
apprehending and apprehension of change. We 
distinguish between our looking at one part after 
another of what remains the same and is simul- 
taneously there, and looking at what is actually 
changing. It is true that we can only perceive 
change because our perception takes time, but from 
the fact that a mental process is necessary to appre- 
hend motion, it no more follows that what is 
apprehended is a mental synthesis than it follows 
that number is mental because it takes time to 
count. The difference between simultaneity and 
change is that simultaneity seems to stand over 



138 THE PHILOSOPHY OF BERGSON 

against the process of our perception, whereas the 
time of the change we observe is also the time of 
our perceiving. But the motion is no less objective 
than the simultaneity. 

Reality then, as we experience it, in which we 
discern spatial determinations, is not homogeneous, 
but has qualitative differences : it is not a sum 
of simultaneities, although we find that it implies 
simultaneity. This seems to bring us back to Berg- 
son's view, that heterogeneity is "the very ground 
of our experience," and that the conception of 
space is " a reaction against that." It does ; but to 
his view, as expounded at least in Time and Free 
Will, with a difference. For we see that the very 
ground of our experience cannot be merely the 
heterogeneous : it is only because in that experience 
we recognise likeness, and what is qualitatively in- 
distinguishable, that we can arrive at the notion of 
the purely homogeneous : nor can the very ground 
of our experience be merely heterogeneous change, 
for we could not arrive at the conception of pure 
simultaneity, were it not for the contrast in any 
perception between that which is permanent and 
that which changes. And upon the possibility of 
recognising likeness among qualities, and the 
distinction between rest and change in that 



SPACE, TIME, AND MOTION 139 

which we perceive, rests our knowledge of external 
reality. 

This is not, I think, inconsistent with Bergson's 
main position. For him the important question is 
whether we make identity and simultaneity the 
elements of reality and try to explain qualitative 
difference and change in terms of them, or whether, 
starting with the experience of quality and the 
experience of time, we can explain how we came to 
the conception of identity and of simultaneity which 
quantity implies. The first position breaks down 
in the attempt to express qualitative differences in 
terms of quantity and changes in terms of simul- 
taneities. The second position implies a recognition 
of the fact that change and quality are characteristic 
of external phenomena as well as of our conscious- 
ness. How Bergson explains the part played by 
quantity and simultaneity in a universe whose reality 
is change, we shall consider later. 

We have seen that space cannot be regarded as a 
separate sphere of reality characterised by quantity 
and simultaneity ; any purely quantitative reality is 
impossible : it remains to ask whether consciousness 
can be regarded as independent of the elements of 
simultaneity and identity which Bergson has made 
characteristic of space. Consciousness, or the experi- 



Ho THE PHILOSOPHY OF BERGSON 

ence of duration, is distinguished from space as 
being essentially process and change. Yet each 
moment of consciousness, as Bergson says, is " con- 
temporaneous with a state of the external world." 
This is no mere accident of states of conscious- 
ness. Consciousness is of the objective world, and 
our conscious experience depends for its character 
upon its contents, however untrue it is to make 
it a sum or aggregate of such contents. Further, 
while the characteristic of conscious life is that its 
elements interpenetrate and that the consciousness of 
the past enters into the present, it is clear that this 
happens in the most varying degrees, and that while 
no element of conscious life can be regarded as 
completely external to the rest, some psychical 
states are more capable of such treatment than 
others. We can, e.g. make inquiries into a man's 
powers of discrimination between sensations, and 
that implies that we study such sensations in their 
relation to external causes or occasions, and not in 
relation to the rest of his mental life ; that we can 
regard such sensations as recurring and as being 
in normal circumstances of a constant character, 
although, strictly speaking, recurrence in conscious 
life is impossible. There are some elements in our 
conscious life which are more easily known by their 



SPACE, TIME, AND MOTION 141 

correspondences with external objects than by their 
position in the whole conscious life. 

That the characteristics supposed to distinguish 
duration from space appear in different degrees in 
different moments in our conscious life is recognised 
by Bergson, when he insists that in conscious life 
there are degrees of freedom. For his proof of the 
non-quantitative nature of psychical states does not 
of itself, as we saw, prove the reality of freedom. 
It only disproves certain a 'priori arguments for 
determinism. Freedom, in his view, rests not so 
much on the inexplicability of actions as on the 
fact that certain actions are to be explained only 
by the whole of our consciousness, because the 
past enters into and is held together with the 
present. What is produced must be new, must 
be regarded as a creation and not as a predictable 
result. " There is no need to associate a number 
of conscious states in order to rebuild the person, 
for the whole personality is in a single one of them, 
provided that we know how to choose it ; and the 
outward manifestation of this inner state will be just 
what is called a free act, since the self alone will 
have been the author of it, and since it will express 
the whole of the self. Freedom thus understood is 
not absolute, as a radically libertarian philosophy 



1 42 THE PHILOSOPHY OF BERGSON 

would have it : it admits of degrees. For it is 
by no means the case that all conscious states blend 
with one another as raindrops with the water of 
a lake. The self, in so far as it has to do with 
a homogeneous space, develops as a kind of surface, 
and on this surface independent growths may form 
and float." 1 We have noticed that determinism 
leads naturally to an associationist psychology, and 
that we can only regard psychical states as caused 
if we can regard them as external to one another, 
and the proof of the impossibilities of associationist 
psychology is part of the argument for freedom. 
At the same time, associationist psychology has 
some basis in fact. There is such a phenomenon 
as the association of ideas. The mistake made by 
the associationist school was to attempt to explain 
thinking as a kind of association. But the associa- 
tion of ideas, while it is not thinking, does occur 
in our mental life, and no one would think of calling 
it an instance of freedom. If association of ideas 
determines our action, we are acting as we do 
because we have met with such and such circum- 
stances, and had such an association suggested to 
us. Such associated ideas, just because they are 
elements in mental life, are part of a time-process, 

1 Time and Free Will. p. 166. 



SPACE, TIME, AND MOTION 143 

and yet they can be isolated, though no doubt not 
completely since something of their nature is affected 
by the whole mental life in which they find a place. 

We see, then, that if there are some actions into 
which all our past life enters, there are some which 
are merely on the surface of our life. The fact 
that it is convenient to measure some of our 
psychical states, such as sensations of light, in 
terms of their spatial correspondences, and obviously 
absurd to measure others, such as joy or sorrow, is a 
mark of this difference. No state of consciousness 
is exactly measurable, and the notion of complete 
correspondence between psychical and physical 
phenomena is, as we have seen, an ideal which 
involves a contradiction, and yet there are cases 
in which a correspondence exists, and with regard 
to certain parts of our mental life it can be worked 
out with some completeness. The freedom of our 
conscious life is also ideal. For in no action is our 
whole consciousness really concerned. There are 
no actions which we should not do slightly other- 
wise were our whole mental life involved in the 
act. All are partially explained by the external 
circumstances of the moment. We are free, but 
free within limits. 

The contrast between quality and quantity, in- 



i 4 4 THE PHILOSOPHY OF BERGSON 

terpenetration and externality, which was found to 
be implied in external phenomena, is found also 
within mental life ; that manifests both freedom 
and external determination of one state by another 
as opposite extremes. But phenomena in space 
seem to become more intelligible the more they 
are capable of quantitative treatment ; mental life, 
on the contrary, is most intelligible when it is 
most a unity and most free. Corresponding, 
therefore, with the contrast between mental life 
and phenomena in space, there seems to be a 
contrast in two kinds of intelligibility. Free 
actions are from the outside the least explicable 
of actions, from the inside the most intelligible ; 
and as our mental life exhibits both freedom and 
external determination, it can be studied in two 
ways, and corresponding to these two ways are 
two conceptions of time. Just in so far as the 
association of ideas is a fact in our experiencing — 
in so far, that is, as we can describe the place of 
certain elements in our mental life as a position 
following after or coinciding with others, we 
naturally think of time as what Bergson calls 
spatialised time — a determined order of separate 
events. For we are dealing with that part of 
our life most determined by its spatial relations. 



SPACE, TIME, AND MOTION 145 

Contrasted with that is time not constituted by 
succession since the elements are not separable, 
but such that consciousness of the past is present, 
not potentially but actually, in consciousness of the 
present. 

We say our conscious life is intelligible because 
it is continuous and can be followed ; the parts are 
seen in their relation to and interpenetrated with the 
past. But if we ask how this is possible, the answer 
can only be that we can in one act of consciousness, 
which may take time but remains one, hold together 
both past and present. Similarly, all thinking and 
reasoning are but holding together in consciousness 
elements which previously were isolated. The only 
test of the irrational is that it is a proposed com- 
bination of elements which cannot be so held 
together. There is in this respect no contrast 
between our thinking and our action. A rational 
purpose or a rational action is not one which can be 
measured or anticipated, but one which we will or 
effect in the light of our whole life, one which is 
the outcome of the holding in one act of thought 
all our knowledge. Hence we call an action free 
not because it is inexplicable, but because it is the 
result of a synthesis which is unique and incapable 
of repetition ; which, just because it is an act which 



146 THE PHILOSOPHY OF BERGSON 

brings together into a new whole the elements of 
the past, is really a creation. 

Contrasted with this is the intelligibility of ex- 
ternal relations. In counting we are considering 
simply the quantitative aspect of objects ; and while, 
as Bergson says, " When we assert that number is a 
unit, we understand by this that we master the 
whole of it by a simple and indivisible intuition of 
the mind " 1 (i.e. the apprehension of the laws of 
quantitative relations is itself a creative act of the 
mind), yet we think of things as countable in so 
far as we can ignore all but their relations to ex- 
ternal things. Hence it follows that the relations of 
things that are counted are regarded as necessary, 
for counting implies relation to the external and ignor- 
ing of the qualitative nature of the thing. When 
we say that elements in the mental life which we 
can isolate from the rest are not free, but can be 
understood scientifically, it is not because they are 
isolated that we can so understand them, but be- 
cause they are repeatable. For in contrast with our 
understanding of free action, if we consider how 
we understand things through the law of causation, 
we find that there understanding depends on repe- 
tition. For in our knowledge of empirical causa- 

1 Time and Free Will, p. 80. 



SPACE, TIME, AND MOTION 147 

tion we do not understand the relation of cause to 
effect, but having seen one thing become another, 
when we can regard one cause as the same as 
another, we can also treat the effects as the same. 
The necessity of causation is ultimately the neces- 
sity of identity. 

Hence the contrast between freedom and neces- 
sity does not depend simply on the contrast between 
consciousness and the outside world (for we have seen 
that the contrast between consciousness, time, succes- 
sion, and quality on the one hand, and what is with- 
out consciousness, space, simultaneity, and quantity 
on the other, breaks down if we attempt to press 
it too far) ; it depends on the distinction between 
what can only be understood as individual and what 
can be regarded as identical with other things and 
studied in its external or quantitative relations. 

It is now time to reinforce this view of the rela- 
tions between duration and extensity by a con- 
sideration of the problems raised by the nature of 
motion and external change. We can distinguish 
between the manner in which we apprehend the 
multiplicity of our own conscious life and the 
manner in which we apprehend what is countable, 
but motion seems to be inadequately apprehended 
in either of these two ways. We must regard some 



148 THE PHILOSOPHY OF BERGSON 

motion as external to us. It is not explicable as 
part of our experiencing or of the duration of which 
we are conscious. Rather we know the nature of 
many motions to be dependent on spatial relations 
beyond the circle of our experience. Yet if we ex- 
plain motion in terms of the space it occupies, we 
eliminate time from it, and time is of its essence. 

This latter point has already been treated in 
considering the relation of change and space, but 
it will be worth while to examine it in more detail. 
The physical sciences, such as mechanics or astronomy, 
deal with motion in so far as it is measurable and 
therefore in its relation to space. In such sciences 
we are dealing throughout with space and simul- 
taneities. No doubt all knowledge of motion 
involves our time - process, for each stage in a 
motion we are studying is a simultaneity between 
spatial elements and an element in our time-process, 
and involves motion objectively perceived, for with- 
out the distinction between succession in our appre- 
hending and apprehension of succession, there could 
be for us no objective motion ; but in the measure- 
ment of motion, reference to the individual observing 
is eliminated, and for reference to individual perceived 
motions is substituted reference to universal motion, 
manifesting itself in different spatial simultaneities 



SPACE, TIME, AND MOTION 149 

which alone we can measure. That real duration 
and real lapse of time are not calculated, is shown by 
the fact that if the whole process went twice as fast, 
so long as the relation of the arrangements in space 
were preserved, it would make no difference to the 
calculations. 

But if we really eliminate the element of dura- 
tion, we come to a conception of change where 
time is left out and an account of causal connec- 
tion becomes simply an account of a succession of 
states with no explicable relation between them. 
We come to regard the relation of the past to 
the present in the way in which we regard the 
relation of one of the parts of a simultaneity to 
the rest. As the parts are all there to begin with, 
so all the stages or different arrangements in space 
are treated as being there to begin with. Now 
this process can be carried on quite plausibly so 
long as we are dealing with particular changes 
selected out of the whole : for in tracing the con- 
ditions of such a change we expose conditions which 
have previously coexisted ; they can be regarded as 
having all been there to begin with. It still must 
be remarked that, if all the conditions were there, 
the effect must have been there also, and we find 
that at least one condition, namely the bringing 



150 THE PHILOSOPHY OF BERGSON 

together of the conditions, has been omitted. But 
this attempt to eliminate time from causation breaks 
down completely when we apply it to the whole. 
For we must then regard the past and the present 
as two multiplicities, each simultaneous but one 
successive to the other ; and the relation between 
the simultaneities cannot itself have the necessity 
of simultaneity. The only possible answer which 
this conception suggests is that the two multi- 
plicities are identical — that the whole never changes. 
The belief in the necessary relation between cause 
and effect leads straight to the view that cause and 
effect are identical, and that there is no change in 
the whole. But this final elimination of time from 
causation makes it more than ever clear that time 
cannot be eliminated without eliminating change, 
and it breaks down from its obvious absurdity. 

This is the contradictory result reached if we 
begin with a measurement of motion by the space 
traversed, which marks the limits of the motion 
but does not explain it. All such measurements 
of motion imply that motion is the primary fact 
and space that by which we measure it, but the 
working out of the mechanical method into a 
mechanical explanation inverts the relation, makes 
space or the permanent prior to change, and so, as 



SPACE, TIME, AND MOTION 151 

we have seen, makes change unmeaning. If we 
give up the ideal which science sometimes wrongly 
sets before itself, and examine the actual practice 
of science, we find that all account of change or 
motion implies an element of perceived change 
or motion to begin with, which is taken as given 
and is not explained. The motions of falling 
bodies are related to one another in terms of the 
space through which they fall, but they are all 
treated as instances of the one general law of 
gravitation which is not explained but apprehended 
as a fact. In all accounts of change we must come 
ultimately to one thing being perceived to change 
into another, which is the basis of, but is not 
explained by, the scientific account. 

Faced with these difficulties, we may try the 
other explanation of change which, in Time and Free 
Will, Bergson seems to suggest. As time is of the 
essence of change, can we understand change other- 
wise than as we understand time, by living and 
experiencing it ? We experience time as part of 
our conscious life. There we are at any moment 
aware of a process going on the elements of which 
are complex but form a whole. The whole is 
continuous in that it forms an experience in which 
consciousness of the past enters into consciousness 



152 THE PHILOSOPHY OF BERGSON 

of the present. It is something which we can 
understand when we live through it, but not some- 
thing parts of which we can predict from the study 
of other parts. Do we not apprehend the nature 
of motion more truly in such experience than in any 
summing of simultaneities ? 

The difficulty of this position is that while it 
seems to provide a more satisfactory conception of 
the general nature of motion, it offers no method 
by which we can understand actual motions except 
that of regarding them as elements in our own 
change and denying their objectivity. But as we 
noticed, the perception of change implies a dis- 
tinction between the change in our apprehending 
and in that which we apprehend. If we hold that 
change or motion can only be properly understood 
when conceived as part of a whole which has real 
duration, nevertheless it is quite undoubted that 
our experience is not that whole, that we are only 
looking at such a whole from the outside and only 
apprehending a small part of it. No doubt we may 
ourselves be a part of the whole, but we are also 
separate from it and regard it from without. We 
must distinguish, then, the change which we ex- 
perience in ourselves, and may understand through 
its relation to our whole development, from the 
change or motion which we perceive. If we insist 



SPACE, TIME, AND MOTION 153 

that it is the nature of motion or change to be 
understood as an element in a whole that endures, 
we must also remember that external motion is 
not an element in a whole all of which we can com- 
prehend. The very fact that our own duration 
forms an organic whole which is more or less 
explicable from within, implies its relative externality 
to the rest of the universe. 

There is this further difficulty in turning from 
the measurement of motion to the living experience 
of it in ourselves, that the assumption underlying 
the rejection of measurement is that motions have 
individuality and can only be understood through 
their individuality. But what guarantee have we 
that the motion which we can perceive in a single 
intuition as one and indivisible is grasped in its 
true unity? Rather we know that we meet with 
motions whose extent is far beyond anything we 
can grasp in a single intuition, as we may see as 
one motions that have really different individualities. 
The motion of the stars we can never see or actu- 
ally experience as one. The sum of the motions of 
many minute creatures may seem to us one barely 
perceptible motion. In what is to us a single in- 
tuition we may be dealing only with part of that 
which can only be understood as an organic whole, 
or with a sum of such wholes. 



154 THE PHILOSOPHY OF BERGSON 

Motion, then, seems to be intermediary between 
our experience of duration in our conscious life and 
our perception of space. The first seems to offer 
an ideal of the way in which motion or change 
might become thoroughly intelligible : but we can 
only begin to understand motion by recognising its 
independence of our conscious life and its relation 
to the space which it traverses. The recognition 
that motion cannot be expressed adequately in terms 
of the space through which it moves shows us, not 
that it ought to be regarded as subjective, but that 
we can never give a full explanation of external 
phenomena. The ideal of a universal mathematic 
which should explain all changes must yield to a 
recognition that in physics we assume perceived 
motion to begin with as mere matter of fact. 
Science seems to eliminate time from its calculations 
because it takes for granted a reference to per- 
ceived time throughout. But the justification of 
the scientific treatment must lie in the fact that the 
changes related by science are really connected with 
one another. Any change involves real time or 
duration, but that we distinguish a change does not 
imply that the change we distinguish is presented 
as a whole, or that the object we distinguish as 
moving has an individual time-experience such as 
we have. We experience ordinarily what is only a 



SPACE, TIME, AND MOTION 155 

part of a larger duration, and we come to under- 
stand objective motion better by seeing it to be a 
part of a great system of motion than, in words 
which Bergson sometimes uses, by " putting our- 
selves inside it" or "living it" or "feeling it." For 
by the former method we may be at least making 
an approach to apprehending the whole of which 
the motion we have discerned is but a part : we can 
feel in ourselves only the muscular sensations that 
accompany motion. We can only live life, but we 
can perceive a motion which is certainly not in 
itself life. 

If we hold that motion can only be thoroughly 
understood when it is seen as an individual system 
like that of our own consciousness, neither quantita- 
tive measurement which ignores individuality alto- 
gether, nor our own feelings which would impose 
our individuality on other things, are adequate for 
the purpose. How can we, who have a duration 
of our own which separates us from other things, 
apprehend truly the duration of things without us ? 
and why is it that in much of our thinking we seem 
to attach no importance to the real individuality of 
the things we are examining ? These are questions 
for which Bergson prepares an answer in his theory 
of perception in Matter and Memory. 



CHAPTER IV 

MATTER AND MEMORY 

§ i. — Bergson's Account of Perception and 
Memory 

We have discussed already Bergson's account of 
the antinomy implied in all theories of knowledge 
which start with one or other of the conceptions 
of consciousness and externality. If consciousness 
is made the centre of our explanation, the objec- 
tivity of knowledge becomes incapable of explana- 
tion : science is an accident. If the objects of 
knowledge as external and apart from conscious- 
ness are made the centre, consciousness itself 
becomes a mystery. Further, we noticed that the 
contradictions partly arise from the attempt to 
state the relations between the knowing mind and 
its objects in terms of space. Words like " inside" 
and " external " are productive only of confusion. 
From their use arises the notion that there is a dis- 
tinction in being between the objects of knowledge 

and the real, and that if things are within conscious- 

156 



MATTER AND MEMORY 157 

ness they must be in some other place from the 
rest of reality. It is impossible to give an account 
of perception in terms of space alone. Bergson's 
way out of the antinomy is to insist that theories 
of perception which are spatial make the same 
mistake as theories of causation which omit time. 
"Questions relating to subject and object, in their 
distinction and their union, should be stated in 
functions of time rather than of space." 1 In our 
discussion of the antinomy we connected with this 
solution the fact that the two contrasted systems of 
consciousness and the external world come together 
in the action of the individual. The fact that in 
the system of action and reaction which science 
studies from without there are some actions which 
can only be understood as the work of individuals, 
and as not necessitated by the general system, marks 
the inadequacy of the external account of reality, 
for individual action implies purpose, and that can 
only be understood in consciousness. The fact 
that purpose can only be expressed in action upon 
a world with laws of its own, makes the analysis 
of purpose inadequate without a reference to the 
external world whose nature is independent of 
purpose. Consciousness issues in action and in- 

1 Matter and Memory, p. 77. 



158 THE PHILOSOPHY OF BERGSON 

determinate action implies consciousness. There- 
fore the study of consciousness apart from the 
action in which it issues is as abstract as the study 
of indeterminate action apart from consciousness. 
Bergson studies separately the spatial aspect of 
consciousness which is action and is observable 
like any other action, and the temporal which 
implies memory, and then shows how each implies 
the other, and is in reality inseparable from the 
other. 

In pursuance of this method he insists on 
regarding as a complex of two quite clearly dis- 
tinguishable elements what most writers have taken 
to be the simple irreducible elements in know- 
ledge. Locke, e.g., begins with the assumption 
that the contents of the mind when it thinks are 
simple ideas. Later criticism has had much to 
say as to the interpretation he gave to the term 
idea, but has usually followed him in accepting the 
simplicity of the content of knowledge ; assuming 
that it is either a mental or a physical entity, 
one thing or the other ; or that it is analysable 
either into simple elements next one another, or 
into a combination of universal elements either 
mental or physical. Yet here the contradiction 
involved in Idealism and Realism, which we have 



MATTER AND MEMORY 159 

already analysed, comes back again. For if we 
make the idea or the content of the mind when 
it thinks a mental entity, we get at once either 
to representationism or to solipsism. Once we 
suppose that sensations are within the mind and 
not really objective, there is no getting them out 
again. If we take the other extreme, and assert 
that we perceive objects as they are, as though 
perception were simply transparent, we get into 
corresponding difficulties. It is hard to deny the 
fact that what we see depends on our past mental 
history, that we perceive differently as we have 
learnt and thought differently in the past, or as 
we have different purposes in the present. Can we 
say, e.g. that we hear the same sounds when we 
hear the same language before and after we under- 
stand it ? Again the very notion that we can learn 
more about a thing seems to imply that it is at any 
moment more than we perceive. Such considera- 
tions often compel a distinction between the con- 
tent and the object of knowledge, and it is hard 
to prevent this distinction from driving us back 
to representationism again. 

Bergson's solution of these difficulties is to 
deny the simplicity of objects of perception. His 
analysis of perception begins with a recognition 



160 THE PHILOSOPHY OF BERGSON 

that all perceiving implies time and also implies a 
simultaneous multiplicity, that is space. These two 
elements are taken as ultimate and irreducible. 
This, of course, is only repeating what has already 
been said about counting. All apprehension in- 
volves mental synthesis, but over against the mental 
synthesis a multiplicity simultaneously perceived. 
Both elements, that of the synthesis of time, and the 
given multiplicity over against that, are essential. 
If we ignore the second element, we make thought 
something which constructs its data out of nothing. 
The two elements are not separable. We have 
seen already in considering space and time that 
no perception is timeless, and that simultaneity is 
a datum of immediate but not of instantaneous 
perception. But although both time and space are 
implied in any act of perceiving, we can understand 
the combination better by observing separately the 
different nature of each. Similarly we must realise 
the difference between memory and perception, 
while recognising that the two come together in 
ordinary perception. For the difficulties of the 
doctrine that perceptions are external come from 
the supposition that we must say of our perception 
of the present whatever is said of memory and of 
imagination ; that memory differs from perception 



MATTER AND MEMORY 161 

only in degree. If these two things are kept 
separate, it will be possible then to understand 
their relation to one another. 

Bergson begins by isolating pure perception, a 
process which he describes in these words: "We 
ask that perception should be provisionally under- 
stood to mean, not any concrete and complex 
perception — that which is enlarged by memories 
and offers always a certain breadth of duration — 
but a pure perception. I mean a perception which 
exists rather in theory than in fact, and could be 
possessed by a being placed where I am, living as 
I live, but absorbed in the present and capable, 
by giving up every form of memory, of obtain- 
ing a vision of matter at once immediate and in- 
stantaneous." * 

Pure perception, then, is something which we 
never experience ; all our actual perceiving takes 
time, and is coloured by memory. For every act 
of perceiving is at one and the same time an element 
of our conscious life (not so much a member of a 
series that goes back into time as the act of a being 
whose existence is duration) and a member of a 
multiplicity which is simultaneously perceived. The 
extent to which our memory, or all our conscious life 

1 Matter and Memory, p. 26. 



1 62 THE PHILOSOPHY OF BERGSON 

whose existence is in time, may enter into any act 
of perceiving, varies, and as it becomes less, we 
come nearer to pure perception, but we never 
actually arrive there : we can see the difference 
made to perception by the element of time, and 
can get to pure perception by abstracting the in- 
fluence of time altogether. 

Pure perception is simultaneity. Let us there- 
fore start with the view of reality which simultaneity 
or space implies, and see what difference is made in 
it by the fact of perception. We start with a world 
of things in space relations, acting and reacting on 
one another. Of this world our body is a part among 
other parts, and like them it is influenced by all the 
rest. But over and above this is the fact that the 
body stands in a particular relation to the other 
parts of the whole ; it is a centre of action. The 
possibility of its being a centre of action depends 
on consciousness, in other words on memory and 
time experience, but it also depends on the fact 
that in perception the body is related to some 
things in the external world and not to others. 
The body as a part of the physical system of the 
universe is related to all the rest ; as perceiving, it 
is related only to some. This latter relation comes 
about through the nervous system. If we sever 



MATTER AND MEMORY 163 

certain nerves in the body, the body remains in- 
fluenced by all the rest of the universe, but it loses 
its particular relation to certain elements in the 
universe. 

In studying perception from the outside in this 
way, the way suggested by the facts of physiology 
and the obvious relation of sense perception to the 
structure of the nervous system, we must keep 
in mind: (1) That since we have begun with 
the distinction between time and space, we cannot 
in analysing the world as given in space and the 
simultaneous relations of the body and other ex- 
ternal things, bring in the consciousness of time. 
We can only deal with the relations between 
movements and movements, and ask what differ- 
ence is made to a movement by being transmitted 
through the nervous system. How that difference 
is made, or why it should be that difference rather 
than another, can only be explained through con- 
sciousness. 

(2) That as we must not give the brain a double 
existence in space as motion and consciousness, so 
we must not give other things a double existence 
as object and presentation. Instead, therefore, of 
asking how the object is made into a presentation, 
instead of supposing that there is more in presenta- 



164 THE PHILOSOPHY OF BERGSON 

tion than in reality, let us start with the obvious 
fact that there is less, in the sense that, while the 
body is in physical relation to all other bodies, it 
only perceives a few of them, and each of its sense- 
organs is related only to particular elements in these 
bodies. Perception is not an instrument of creation 
or construction but of selection. The difference 
between the world as it is and the world as it is 
at any moment perceived, which is so puzzling to 
realism, is a difference of degree not of kind, a 
difference made by perception selecting not creating. 
If we are dealing, then, only with the relation 
of movements to movements, we can ask what 
difference in the relation of the body to its environ- 
ment is effected by the nervous system, since the 
nervous system is concerned with the transmission 
of movements. We can trace a movement entering 
the nervous system and coming out again. What 
difference does the existence of the body make ? 
Surely a difference of indirectness of reaction be- 
tween one motion and another. Between reflex 
action and what we call conscious action there is 
from this point of view only a difference in com- 
plication. In reflex action " a centripetal move- 
ment is reflected back at once from the nerve 
centres of the spinal cord in a centrifugal move- 



MATTER AND MEMORY 165 

ment determining a muscular contraction." l In 
conscious action the brain is affected : but that does 
not mean that somehow pictures or representations 
are produced, but that the stimulation has choice of 
one or more systems of centrifugal movements. 
" The brain appears to us to be an instrument of 
analysis in regard to movement received, and an 
instrument of selection in regard to movement 
executed." 2 As the structure of the nervous 
system becomes more complicated, the choice between 
movements becomes greater. Perception is distinct 
from other movements in that it involves selection : 
selection from among the physical objects which 
shall affect the brain and selection in the nervous 
system of the movements which shall answer that 
affection. Now, this indetermination cannot be 
explained from the point of view of space. For 
indetermination involves time. " The more im- 
mediate the reaction is compelled to be, the more 
must perception resemble a mere contact ; and the 
complete process of perception and of reaction can 
then hardly be distinguished from a mechanical 
impulsion followed by a necessary movement. But 
in the measure that the reaction becomes more 
uncertain and allows more room for suspense, 

1 Matter and Memory , p. 18. 2 Ibid. p. 20. 



1 66 THE PHILOSOPHY OF BERGSON 

does the distance increase at which the animal is 
sensible of the action of that whicjv interests it." 1 
From the point of view of pure perception we are 
only concerned with the relations of movements to 
movements, and with the indetermination inserted 
between the centrifugal and centripetal movements 
by the nervous system, though we can see that such 
indetermination involves time. As any perception 
is selective, and the reason why one element in 
reality is selected rather than another is explained in 
general by the relation of that element to the needs 
or purposes in life, so, as these develop with the 
development of memory, the selection operated by 
consciousness becomes more wide and indeterminate. 
Nevertheless, in studying pure perception, when we 
are asking what is there at any one time, we are 
dealing entirely with movements. 

This method of treating perception naturally 
raises the objection that we are ignoring the element 
of consciousness and the fundamental difference 
between consciousness and action. But pure per- 
ception is not regarded as something existing by 
itself, but rather as one of the aspects of all 
intelligent action, and this method of treatment 
presupposes all along that intelligent action is a 

1 Matter and Memory \ p. 22. 



MATTER AND MEMORY 167 

whole in which the two elements of consciousness 
(which implies time and memory) and action (which 
implies a system of movements in space) can be 
distinguished, each implying the other. All con- 
sciousness issues in action and all indeterminate 
action implies consciousness, but the sharp separa- 
tion sometimes made between consciousness and 
action is unreal. When, for example, we are 
actively engaged with reality, there is little self- 
consciousness, though our action is intelligent and 
involves choice ; but consciousness shows itself in 
a high power of selection from environment and 
in its direction of responding movements towards 
a common purpose. In such cases it is impossible 
to distinguish between acting and knowing. For 
all our thinking is directed towards and issues 
in action, and all our acting is the outcome 
not only of our environment, but of selection 
from that environment and selection from among 
the muscular reactions of which we are capable, 
guided by the organised memories which are 
present and held together in consciousness. We 
distinguish thinking from acting only when the 
indeterminateness of action is developed. Thus 
we can distinguish a developed process of thought 
from the action which is its final result, but that 



1 68 THE PHILOSOPHY OF BERGSON 

process itself will all the time issue in actions, 
speaking or writing, or some form of acted sym- 
bolism. These we class with thinking because 
they are instruments in the development of 
organisation of memory and consciousness, and can 
be distinguished from the final action in which 
they result. But the action itself would be inex- 
plicable apart from the memory and organisation 
of consciousness which is implied in it. Bergson 
is studying this complex process by separating in 
thought its two elements, and his doctrine of pure 
perception implies that all perceiving, as ordinarily 
understood, involves, besides memory and conscious- 
ness, action, but action of a peculiar kind. And 
we can study its differences from other objective 
systems of movement, though we can only explain 
such differences through the consciousness which 
guided our selection of movements. 

We can thus see that the question as to whether 
perceptions are inside or outside consciousness has 
nothing whatever to do with the question whether 
they are inside or outside the brain. Every per- 
ception is inside consciousness inasmuch as it is a 
moment in the duration of consciousness, and held 
together with the memories of the past. But if 
we are considering perception as a simultaneity, i.e. 



MATTER AND MEMORY 169 

pure perception, we are dealing with a movement 
going from the object to the brain, a movement 
involving selection of outside influences by the 
brain and selection of an answering muscular con- 
traction. In that system of movement the brain is 
a part but no more than a part, and the system is 
a whole. The selection is operated in the external 
world, and the responding action is directed towards 
the object thus selected. Nerve processes are 
essential to the whole system, inasmuch as without 
them there could be no perception, but there is 
no question of their producing anything inside the 
brain. The only reason for putting perceptions 
inside the brain is that we sometimes think of the 
movements of the nervous system being trans- 
formed into representations. But that we have 
seen to involve a contradiction. It is suggested 
only because we wish to explain as part of a spatial 
system what can only be understood as part of a 
temporal. But it is just as impossible to explain 
consciousness of time in spatial terms if presenta- 
tions are in the brain as if they are outside. If in 
perception we are concerned with selection in view of 
possible action, our perceptions are where we have to 
act upon them, namely in space. The difference be- 
tween what is perceived and what exists is not a dif- 



170 THE PHILOSOPHY OF BERGSON 

ference of nature as between presentation and object, 
idea and matter, phenomenon and thing in itself; it 
is a difference of degree and of selection. 

Similarly, the difference between perception and 
memory is not a matter of inside or outside either. 
Presentations are not produced in the brain, nor are 
they stored there. The difference is not spatial but 
temporal. I can in one act of consciousness hold to- 
gether the past and the present. That is the essence 
of conscious duration, and cannot be explained in 
terms of anything else. At the same time there 
seems to be a difference between memory and 
perception which suggests that what we remember 
is inside us in a sense in which what we perceive 
is not. The difference is best expressed by the 
distinction between what can be known by one 
person only and what can be known by any one. 
Our memories are accessible only to ourselves. 
Though what we remember is not inside us, no one 
else can know it. It is known only through our 
conscious duration, and we cannot remember every- 
thing, but only what we have perceived. But this 
is only to say that perception implies selection : that 
there is a difference of quantity between what is 
and what is perceived, that things can become part 
of our conscious life only when their action upon 



MATTER AND MEMORY 171 

us is selected by our sense-organs. It is because in 
perception we isolate what we perceive, through the 
distinction of what affects us as a body among other 
bodies, and the limited elements of that whole which 
affect us as a centre of action, that our memories are 
isolated. What we perceive is external to us, and 
can enter indifferently into any person's conscious 
experience as it can be acted upon by any person ; 
but once we have isolated elements of the real world, 
when we are dealing with our selection and with our 
action, it has become part of our conscious ex- 
perience. That, just because it belongs to us as a 
centre of action, is isolated, and therefore inacces- 
sible to other people except through our expression 
of our memory in external action. This is consistent 
with the fact that the relation of subject and object 
is temporal rather than spatial : for it is of the 
essence of time conceived of as a duration known 
in conscious experience to be individual. In all 
this, as we have contended, Bergson is not giving 
any theory of perception which should reduce it to 
anything not itself. The two realities of time and 
space, or duration and extensity, are still taken for 
granted as involved in any analysis of perceiving or 
knowing. Rather because the separation is made, 
we can see clearly why perception cannot be ex- 



172 THE PHILOSOPHY OF BERGSON 

plained directly from the side of space or of what 
is taken as objective, and yet we can see in what 
manner the spatial side of perception as a system of 
movements enters into knowing. The movements 
of the nervous system are as real as any other 
movements. Perception has a side which the phy- 
siologist may study without any attempt to make 
perception consist simply in the movements of the 
nervous system. Consciousness is not explained 
as something extraneous produced by these move- 
ments. Rather these movements, as movements, 
have a character of selection and indeterminate 
action which from the side of space can only be 
noted, and can only be understood in the light of 
consciousness and memory. For what has to be 
explained is the limitation involved in perception : 
that limitation is the work of and depends upon 
the nervous system. 

Two objections commonly made to this view of 
the externality of perception will on examination be 
found only to confirm it. It is sometimes argued 
that the fact that our senses need education proves 
that our perceptions cannot be external. But if our 
sensations were really internal, no amount of edu- 
cation would teach us to externalise them properly. 
There would be no possibility of explaining how we 



MATTER AND MEMORY 173 

begin such education. There would be no grounds 
in the sensations themselves for connecting them 
with one part of space rather than another. If we 
reflect on the education of the sense perceptions, we 
see that by it we do not mean learning that these 
are external, but learning to co-ordinate them. 
We learn to move so as to be able to touch what we 
have seen, and all such co-ordination implies space. 
The truth that such education emphasises is that 
just because our perceptions are selective they are 
not continuous. What we perceive depends partly 
on the motions and positions of our sense-organs, 
and does not express the whole reality which is 
there to be perceived, and we have to restore the 
continuity between the data of the different senses 
as we have to restore the continuity of the separate 
points in the visual field which our attention may 
select as we look this way and that. But it is just 
because we have selected from a whole that it is 
possible to unite. u The aim of this education," in 
Bergson's words, " is to harmonise my senses, to re- 
establish between the data a continuity which has 
been broken by the very discontinuity of the needs 
of my body, finally to reconstruct approximately the 
whole of the material object." 1 

I 1 Matter and Memory, p. 48. 



174 THE PHILOSOPHY OF BERGSON 

The second objection is based on the relation 
between feeling and sensation. It is assumed that 
there is only a difference of degree between them, 
and as it is obvious that pain and pleasure are not 
without the body, it is assumed that perception 
cannot be. This argument, that what holds of 
pleasure and pain must hold of sensation, is frequently 
brought forward by Berkeley. But pain is localised. 
It involves extension, but only the extension of the 
body. The real difference between it and sensation is 
that it represents not possible action but real action. 

This view of perception has started with the 
body in relation to other bodies in space, and has 
dealt throughout with movements and difference of 
character among movements. Starting not with 
consciousness but with action, perception is seen to 
be related to the indeterminateness of the body's 
action and to these movements which imply selec- 
tion on the part of the body and the nervous 
system. But if there is to be a centre of action, that 
must be something other than the selected move- 
ments themselves. That centre cannot be anywhere 
separate in space, for the space is fully occupied 
with the selective movements. The centre cannot 
be spatial, but must be temporal. There must be 
a real centre to determine how the machinery of 



MATTER AND MEMORY 175 

movements shall be used. That implies a unity 
of the past and present, and implies memory. If 
the indetermination of actions is not mere caprice, 
there must be an actual knowledge of the past. 
Hence any account of pure perception must be 
supplemented by an account of memory, for in 
conscious action memory and perception meet. The 
present is a point in the time series of consciousness 
and in the series of simultaneous movements in 
space. An act of perceiving has this double aspect, 
and a study of memory will show how far memory 
modifies the selection of perception. Memory is 
related to and is always expressing itself in action, 
and therefore continually gets confused with the 
present. Pure perception, as we have seen, is in a 
sense a postulate or hypothesis, something which on 
reflection we see must be implied in our perceiving 
though we never experience it in its pure state. 
"Perception ends by being merely an occasion for 
remembering/' and yet " an impersonal basis remains 
in which perception coincides with the object 
perceived." 1 

But the real distinction between memory and 
perception is that just because memory is concerned 
with the past, it is not as such concerned with 

1 Matter and Memory , p. 71. 



176 THE PHILOSOPHY OF BERGSON 

action, for all action is in the present. If there- 
fore memory is concerned with actions only as it is 
brought to bear upon the present, and if we were 
right in holding that when we are dealing with 
actions we have before us simply a system of 
movements made possible by the structure of the 
brain and the nervous system, then the notion that 
the brain is a storehouse of memories must be 
absurd ; for that must be to put the past spatially 
into the present. But to this it may be objected 
that physiology has a great deal to tell us about 
memory, and the connection of different parts of 
the brain with different memories. Are not such 
facts conclusive ? Bergson's answer is that the brain 
cannot be the storehouse of memories, but it may 
contain the machinery by which memory translates 
itself into action. This appeal to the facts of phy- 
siology must be answered by the facts themselves, 
and it will be seen that they are not consistent with 
the view that memories are stored up in the brain, 
but imply that failure of memory comes from a 
failure in the connection between memory and action. 
Now inasmuch as we are claiming for memory 
that it is distinct from perception and the present, 
memory cannot be discovered in any such examina- 
tion of the spatial data as the physiology of the 



MATTER AND MEMORY 177 

nerves or brain might conduct. Yet in such an 
examination we may and do find instruments of 
action whose presence can only be explained by past 
history. But in real memory the past is in the present 
in another sense. It is true of all things in space 
that though we are aware of them in the present, 
they may point us back to the past. Our know- 
ledge of the past in memory is something quite 
different. It is the difference between history based 
entirely upon archaeology and a study of present 
civilisation, and a history which to these adds 
written records of the memory of individuals. 

In all perception the past may be present in two 
ways. The nervous system and the brain are con- 
tinually being modified, and are continually learning 
new series of actions. In that sense we are said to 
remember a thing when in its presence we execute 
the same series of movements which its presence 
produced in us before. But such memory must be 
distinguished from real memory when we remember 
a particular event in the past. If we are learning 
something by heart, we say that we remember it 
when we can produce in the right order a certain 
system of sounds. In the final result the separate 
distinct times that we may learn the lesson are 
unimportant in the sense that there is no evidence 

M 



178 THE PHILOSOPHY OF BERGSON 

in the final result of the separate times of learning. 
We are concerned here wholly with an action or 
series of actions. But such a habit-memory must 
be distinguished from our recollection of each or 
any separate occasion on which we learnt the lesson, 
for each of these remains as it was in the past, 
quite distinct from the habit which now exists and 
which it helped to produce. The present is action ; 
the past has contributed to present action, but can 
also be remembered as distinct in that it is in the 
past. The same distinction is brought out when 
we realise that habit-memory implies time in the 
remembering ; it is a process ; but the recollection 
of a past process does not involve the time of the 
process. These two memories are different in kind : 
the one, recollection, is consciousness of the past ; 
the other is present action. Much confusion is 
involved in any account of memory or, as we shall 
see, of recognition and association, by neglecting 
the distinction between memory and perception and 
trying to make memory concerned with what is 
actually present. Recollection implies consciousness 
of the past, a knowledge where we cannot act. 

To this distinction of habit-memory and recol- 
lection corresponds a distinction of two forms of 
recognition. The distinction is expressed by Berg- 



MATTER AND MEMORY 179 

son thus: "The recognition of a present object is 
effected by movements when it proceeds from the 
object, by representations when it issues from the 
subject." x The study of recognition is of obvious 
importance in any account of memory and per- 
ception, for in it both are clearly combined. We 
have so far been regarding memory and perception 
as distinct, yet in fact they are continually coming 
together. If we are repeating a series of move- 
ments, we are acting in the present, but our action 
may be determined by a recollection, however vague, 
of the past movement which we are trying to re- 
produce. The present in action implies memory of 
the past, and on the other hand memory always 
tends to establish itself in action, to express itself 
in some kind of motor reaction, if only in words or 
rhythmical movement. In recognition we are con- 
cerned with the identity of the present with the 
past, but the direction, so to speak, of the recog- 
nition may take two forms. We may be concerned 
with how we shall act in the present, or may be 
concerned simply with the remembrance of the 
individual in the past. And neglect of these dif- 
ferences has led to an inadequate account of recog- 
nition. For example, Mill and the Associationist 

1 Matter and Memory, p. 87. 



180 THE PHILOSOPHY OF BERGSON 

school, starting with the assumption that the con- 
tents of the mind are individual images united by 
association, can only explain the fact that when we 
see A, which resembles A, we act as though we 
expected If, which resembles B which follows A, 
by saying that A reminds us of A, A by con- 
tiguity produces B, and B by similarity the ex- 
pectation of K They try to get over the difficulty 
that we go directly from A to B* without being 
conscious of any such process, by postulating a 
law of oblivescence. Bradley criticises this account 
with much force, and argues that in such a case 
there is no reference to previously perceived indi- 
viduals at all. Only the universal is concerned. 
His explanation holds good for such instances, but 
it is quite inadequate to explain cases where we 
remember past individuals. The two kinds of 
recognition are different. " To recognise a common 
object is to know how to use it." Such recognition 
does not imply the evocation of a past image and 
a comparison of it with a previous perception. 
Rather in the past experience the nature of the 
object called forth an appropriate reaction, and 
sufficient experience of that kind may establish a 
habit of such action. All our ordinary activities 

1 Matter and Memory, p. III. 



MATTER AND MEMORY 181 

depend on such constant habitual recognition. It 
is almost automatic, so long as it is functioning 
properly. It may of course at one time have 
implied memory of the past consciously distinguished 
from the present, but it need not have done so. 
We fail entirely to understand such processes of 
recognition when we say that they imply judgment. 
They only imply judgment in so far as we interrupt 
the automatic reaction to the universal quality re- 
cognised in the act to go consciously to our memory 
of the past. We can act universals without con- 
sciously recognising them. This is but part of the 
general selective nature of perception. Correspond- 
ing to this kind of recognition we find a failure to 
recognise which is quite compatible with memory. 
In some forms of what is called psychic blindness 
men are incapable of acting appropriately to the 
objects presented to them, and yet it can be shown 
that their memory of the past is intact. Here 
certainly loss of memory, which is caused by lesion 
of the brain, does not mean loss of particular 
memory images, but loss of power to perform 
certain muscular movements. The first explanation 
can be shown to be incompatible with the facts. 

On the other hand, recognition may have a 
perfectly definite reference to the past, as when we 



1 82 THE PHILOSOPHY OF BERGSON 

say, "That man reminds me of some one I met at 
such and such a time and such and such a place." 
Here no doubt we start with a universal, as Bradley 
insists, or some kind of universal element ; but 
our recognition is directed towards something quite 
definite and individual in the past. It is directed 
towards it but is not caused by it ; for we may 
have the feeling, e.g. that we have seen a thing 
before and be unable to remember what it is. 
We are all familiar with the process of trying to 
remember a name we have forgotten. Here the 
result is quite clearly not caused by the name we 
wish to remember. We must begin with something 
in the present. We are looking for something 
definite in the past. Yet we cannot do it by plung- 
ing at random into our past. The chances would 
be thousands to one against our ever reaching the 
desired result. The failure to reach this definite 
result does not mean that our memory is gone. 
It does not imply that the particular memory-object 
has disappeared ; only that we cannot get hold of 
it : cannot turn our present in the right direction. 
Memory is distinct from the present, but a memory- 
object is got at through the present. 

We have, then, actions and recollections — the 
present and the past — set over against one another. 



MATTER AND MEMORY 183 

Yet action is always being modified by memory of 
the past ; and memory is approached through action 
in the present and realises itself in present action. 
For our action seems to select from memory as it 
selects from presented objects. It both uses and 
inhibits pure memory. For the more we are absorbed 
in action, the more does our memory express itself 
only in memorised actions and the more is our re- 
collection confined to what is wanted or relevant 
to the purposes of present action. Only when we 
are not concerned with action, in a reverie, or in 
dreaming, do we seem to plunge into the land of 
memory for its own sake, though even then our 
memory is suggested by elements in the present. 

The past, then, is distinct from the present, and 
yet it cannot be regarded as having an individual 
and concrete existence in memory-images. We are 
still under the misleading influence of spatial meta- 
phor when we picture the past as a series of states, 
held together in consciousness no doubt, but in 
themselves separate, as though our memory-objects 
were discrete things, a series existing in space. The 
phrase " holding together " is misleading if it implies 
anything of this kind. Our memories influence and 
blend with our perception, but not in the sense 
that they are seen side by side with it. For our 



184 THE PHILOSOPHY OF BERGSON 

present is not a simultaneous block. It is itself 
a series of actions. It itself involves duration. In 
describing it as action, we imply that its reality 
is change. There is no actual instantaneous present. 
Our actual present as lived is consciousness of the 
past and looking towards the future. This is the 
reality which we experience. If we begin with this 
changing process in time we can understand the part 
played by the theoretical present. In Bergson's words, 
" Having extension in space, my body experiences 
sensations and at the same time executes movements. 
Sensations and movements being localised at deter- 
mined points of the extended body, there can only 
be at a given moment a single system of move- 
ments and sensations. More generally, in that 
continuity of becoming which is reality itself, the 
present moment is constituted by the quasi-instan- 
taneous section effected by our perception in the 
flowing mass ; and this section is precisely what we 
call the material world." 1 

This is clearly but the corollary of the con- 
nection between time and space, or duration and 
extensity, which was elaborated in the last chapter. 
Externality implies simultaneity, and when we are 
considering the objects only so far as they exist 

1 Matter and Memory , p. 178. 



MATTER AND MEMORY 185 

together, we are considering their space relations. 
Hence arises the conception of space as a homo- 
geneous medium without qualitative differences. 
But such a medium cannot be regarded as existing 
or as being known apart from qualitative differences 
and apart from duration. For if spatial order be 
a presupposition of perception, so also are qualitative 
differences and time. We commit a fallacy if we 
regard the simultaneous or spatial order as some- 
thing existing in its own right and then try to build 
up time or change from it. Similarly, when we are 
considering the nature of mental processes, we may 
begin by insisting that perception is of external 
objects, and that it necessitates a connection between 
the body and other objects mediated by a certain 
nervous organisation, so that in all perception there 
is a certain system of mutual relations which may 
be said " to be there " at any one time. But we 
commit the same fallacy when we try to represent 
memory, or mental processes as a whole, in terms of 
any simultaneous relations of this kind, as though 
these " pure perceptions " could be thought to exist 
in themselves and then could be regarded as being 
stored up in the brain. Really the simultaneous 
relation is but one side of a reality whose other 
aspect is temporal, and therefore already involves 



1 86 THE PHILOSOPHY OF BERGSON 

memory and consciousness of the past. The same 
mistake is made in a more subtle way if we give 
up attempts to place memories anywhere in space, 
but think of them as existing in the past, in 
their separate condition, as though the past were a 
mysterious kind of space, like a fourth dimension. 
The fault of all associationist psychology is to 
suppose that perceptions are in their inception clean- 
cut, independent entities, and then to represent 
mental life as some sort of arrangement or com- 
position of such entities. We do not really mend 
matters by calling the constituents of our mental 
life universals so long as we still think of them as 
similarly detachable things. If we try to describe 
the nature of a universal apart from the manner 
in which we apprehend it, we get into the same 
difficulties. The mind becomes either nothing at 
all or a jumble. 

The nature of mental processes, then, is not to 
be conceived as a sum or collocation of a sensori- 
motor present and a past which is memory or idea, 
as though there were acts of consciousness which 
are wholly one or the other, perceptions in which 
there is no element of time or memories with no 
connection with or reference to the present. Yet at 
the same time as in perception we are in contact 



MATTER AND MEMORY 187 

with reality in spatial relations which we perceive to 
be independent of our perceiving it, and thus can 
distinguish existence in space from being perceived, 
so in realisation of memory the consciousness that 
we are remembering implies the independence of 
the memory from the present consciousness in 
which we are remembering it, and we can distinguish 
existence in memory from being in consciousness. 
As in the case of perception we must think of 
objects as being there before they are perceived, 
so we think of what we remember as " being 
there " before it is remembered. It is the attempt 
to realise what this " being there " means in the 
case of memory which leads us to regard the brain 
or the mind as some kind of storehouse of memo- 
ries. The truth is that consciousness implies both 
the existence in space of what is beyond our present 
perception and the existence of a past in memory of 
which we are not actually conscious. Our past is 
known to exist in virtue of its connection with our 
present consciousness as is what is beyond conscious- 
ness in space, but the connection is of a different 
character. This difference makes us more reluctant 
to regard the unconscious as existent, because the 
connections of the real in space have an order and 
necessity which the connections of memory do not 



1 88 THE PHILOSOPHY OF BERGSON 

seem to have ; but the latter are none the less real 
for that. We can understand the nature of mental 
processes by distinguishing their double aspect of 
relation to space and of process in time, by realising 
that memory is distinct from present perception 
and yet that it continually realises itself in present 
perception. In all intelligent thinking the past is 
continually used in guiding our selection among 
present movements, and present perception in its 
turn is used but as a symbol of the past. All our 
memories are " there " to be used, but not jumbled 
together in a kind of lucky-bag in which we plunge 
at random, but connected together by laws. 

This organisation of mental life is manifested 
especially in what are called general ideas. Bergson, 
in his account of them, points out how nominalism 
and conceptualism alike err in regarding but one 
aspect of our thinking. Nominalism, which is 
connected with the doctrine of association, thinks 
of the mind as a collection or storehouse of indi- 
viduals, and places their unity only in the artificial 
action of naming, yet can show no explanation of 
why the different individuals, if only different, have 
the same name. The doctrine of association is 
made to depend on the law of contiguity, although 
in memory, as conceived by association, every " idea " 



MATTER AND MEMORY 189 

is contiguous with every other ; and on the law of 
similarity, without any explanation being given of 
how there can be similarity between individual ideas 
and although actually any idea has some element of 
similarity with any other. Conceptualism starts 
with the universal, with the unity implied in re- 
cognition, without seeing that such unity does not 
exhaust the character of the several objects and is 
not an isolated element in them, but is only seen in 
individuals. All attempts to describe a general idea 
either as a collection of individuals or a separable 
universal are attempts to describe it as a separate 
thing, while actually it is inseparable from the act 
in which the individuals are apprehended as alike. 
Generalisation, according to Bergson, begins with the 
identical motor reaction called out by the identity 
in the quality. Pure " similarity acts objectively 
like a force. " * There can, as we have seen, be 
recognition in action when there is not conscious 
recognition. Every general idea implies what has 
been described as " identity of motor reaction," but 
we are neglecting one aspect of it when we describe 
it thus ; for that motor reaction is guided by and 
implies memory of individuals. Recognition of 
similarity may express itself in an identity of re- 

1 Matter and Memory, p. 207. 



i 9 o THE PHILOSOPHY OF BERGSON 

action towards individual sensations which are always 
more varied and changing than the reaction they 
call forth ; it may in more developed thinking ex- 
press itself in the artificial reactions of language, 
but such recognition is only possible because the 
memory of other perceptions is synthesised in it, and 
the general idea is neither the individual memories 
nor the action which manifests it, but, in Bergson's 
words, " the current which goes from one to the 
other." * The nature of mental operations is appre- 
hended in this process ; we understand the nature 
of a universal when we judge, but we cannot de- 
scribe it in terms of the elements we can discern in 
the process. 

§ 2. — Consciousness and Action 

In this account of generality Bergson is mainly 
concerned with the point we have just mentioned 
— the nature of mental operations and the inade- 
quacy of any attempt to express them in static 
terms. His account of perception and memory 
and their relation has confirmed his first descrip- 
tion of duration as a process where there is a mutual 
interpenetration of parts and the past enters into 

1 Matter and Memory, p. 24. 



MATTER AND MEMORY 191 

the present, and where there is continually new 
creation. The purpose of this account is, as he 
says, mainly psychological. For that reason he con- 
fines himself more to the examination of elementary 
forms of mental processes, not working out the 
application of his views to more developed think- 
ing. But there are in this theory of perception 
and memory and their relation points of more 
than psychological interest which it may be well 
to consider. 

In the first place it is important to notice that 
Bergson's account of the process and change of 
mental life implies within that process the contrast 
of the changing and the permanent or at least of 
the relatively variable and the relatively stable. 
The association of ideas, the recognition of similarity 
and difference, are impossible of explanation unless 
we recognise the contrast between the instability 
of sensation and the invariable working of the 
motor reaction. 1 A mental life in which all is 
difference is as impossible as one in which all 
is identity. A consciousness in which change and 
variety is most evident is a dreaming consciousness. 
One requisite of intelligent action is throughout 
the elimination or ignoring of differences and the 

1 Matter and Memory, p. 208. 



192 THE PHILOSOPHY OF BERGSON 

apprehension of essential identity. The processes 
of thought are creative, but the new can be created 
only on the basis of recognition of the relation of 
the new situation with the old. Habit is as essential 
to thinking as it is to action, though thinking 
and action which are only repetitions of acquired 
habits are of little value. Yet this element of 
stability and identity is often obscured in Bergson's 
account of mental life. He insists so strenuously 
that habit or automatism is a bad master, that he 
sometimes seems to forget its value as a servant. 

More important is Bergson's insistence that 
mental operations can only be understood in their 
relation to action. We have noticed already that 
the distinction between memory and perception is 
for Bergson a distinction between thought and 
action. " The past is idea : the present is ideo- 
motor." * Pure perception he has explained in 
terms of action, for our bodily structure and 
nervous organisation are directed towards action : 
the nervous organisation being an instrument of 
movements and movements only. It is otherwise, 
of course, with pure memory, but even memory is 
realised and expresses itself in action. 

This doctrine of Bergson's, that the " orientation 

1 Matter and Memory, p. 74. 



MATTER AND MEMORY 193 

of our consciousness towards action appears to be 
the fundamental law of our psychical life," * has 
two aspects, which it is well to distinguish. In 
the first place we have his contention that the diffi- 
culties of most accounts of knowledge come from 
their isolation of thought from action, and that we 
must realise that as every mental act has spatial 
relations and is in a process involving time, so 
it is both thought and action, and these two 
aspects are complementary. In the second place 
Bergson holds that the influence of action upon 
thought distorts our apprehension of reality, and 
must be overcome if we are to apprehend reality 
as it is. The first point has already been con- 
sidered in relation to Bergson's account of per- 
ception and memory. Pure perception is, according 
to that, a system of movements, differing only from 
other relations of bodies in space in its selective 
character, that in its turn depending on the 
synthesis of past and present in consciousness. 
The distinction between pure memory and habit- 
memory is again a distinction between thought 
and action, as is the distinction between the two 
kinds of recognition. We have seen how failure 
to distinguish between memory and perception 

1 Matter and Memory, p. 234. 

N 



i 9 4 THE PHILOSOPHY OF BERGSON 

made it impossible to understand the nature of 
mental operations, and how the distinction between 
two kinds of recognition is a clue to the difficulties 
connected with the nature of general ideas. 

It might be objected that while in rudimentary 
mental life it may be hard to distinguish between 
thinking and acting, in more developed thinking there 
is no difficulty. It is true that Bergson in Matter 
and Memory is more concerned with rudimentary 
forms of thought, with universals which are acted 
and not thought, and with the association of ideas ; 
yet he suggests that in developed thinking symbolic 
action in the shape of words takes the place of the 
simple motor reaction to external environment. 
But speech and writing, and all forms of language, 
are action, and the expression in words of the 
organised memories of the past is as essential to 
developed thinking as more immediate and obvious 
motor reactions are to elementary perception. The 
relation of language to thought is not easily stated, 
yet it is clear that while language and thought are 
no more identical than the simple motor reaction 
and the whole mental process of which it is the 
manifestation, yet all developed thinking implies 
and is impossible without language. The bare 
identity of the word is the mark of a rich com- 



MATTER AND MEMORY 195 

plexity of memory and action, and the meaning of 
a word is nothing simple or static, but varies with 
the richness of the experience which it synthesises. 
Yet without the fixity and definiteness given by 
words thinking would be impossible. When 
Bergson says, then, that all our consciousness is 
orientated towards action, that may be only another 
form of Croce's assertion that thought cannot be 
separated from its expression. And whilst agree- 
ing with Bergson's argument against a view which 
would so separate consciousness and action as to 
make them two separate forms of mental life, each 
capable of explanation by itself, we must re- 
member that the use of words and symbols of 
expression in developed thinking is action of a 
kind that serves in its turn the ends of thinking 
or that organisation of memory and past experience 
which is the presupposition of action. Hence, we 
are wrong to regard any existing present action as 
necessarily the end to which previous organisation 
of memory has contributed. It isjwrong to think 
of action over against thought as being necessarily 
final. In many cases present action, as writing or 
reading, for example, is used but as a symbol of 
the past, and the action in which thought issues 
is, in its turn, used for the development of 



196 THE PHILOSOPHY OF BERGSON 

thought. This does not mean that action is ulti- 
mately subordinate to thought, but that these two 
aspects of mental life react upon one another. 
Further when Bergson talks about the instantaneous 
present, which is action, he is employing the 
term action in an abstract sense. For our actions 
imply time and duration, and the extent of time, 
which is the present of an action, depends upon 
the scope of the purpose which inspires it. 

This " orientation of consciousness towards 
action " has another implication. Its considera- 
tion will lead naturally to our examination of 
Bergson's view, that that orientation distorts our 
apprehension of reality. If thought be essentially 
related to action, it must necessarily be in con- 
tact with reality. There can be no meaning in 
the opposite suggestion. This consideration is 
often cited by Bergson in refutation of all merely 
subjectivist theories. Not only does he insist that 
perceptions are external, he describes the primitive 
universal, which is acted and not thought and which 
is the basis of the thought generality, as " similarity 
acting objectively like a force." Thus we cannot 
reduce the reality of universals to that of " points 
of view " or " identity of motor reactions," as 
though reality itself had none of the characteristics 



MATTER AND MEMORY 197 

of the content of thought. For identical motor 
reactions towards objects in which there was no 
identity would be mistaken actions. Hence, that 
organisation of thought, which we have seen to 
imply universals, must follow the nature of the 
real, because it is based on universals discovered 
in action, and in turn looks forward to action. If 
the laws of number and of geometry, for example, 
were simply the creation of thought out of touch 
with reality, they could never manifest themselves 
in action. All thorough-going subjectivist views, 
which divorce the mind from reality, divorce it also 
from action, and suppose it to have a peculiarly 
speculative interest ; they describe the mind as 
looking on at a procession of ideas or its own states. 

Yet if the relation of thought to action ensures 
that thought is in contact with reality, it also makes 
possible an explanation of its divergence. Clearly 
there is a distinction between the object of thought 
and reality, but it is a distinction, as Bergson insists, 
of quantity and not of nature. We noticed in 
Bergson's account of perception that he argues that 
perception is external, but differs from ordinary 
physical relations of the body to other bodies in 
being selective. What we perceive is not something 
other than reality, but it is less than all reality. 



198 THE PHILOSOPHY OF BERGSON 

This selective work of perception is continued in 
the organisation and synthesis of the past which is 
thought. In the action of one body upon another, 
action and reaction are immediate. The difference 
made by the nervous system and by consciousness is 
a difference in the indeterminateness of the response 
to external stimulus, and the more our past experi- 
ence enters into our present, the freer and more 
indeterminate our action. Thought thus implies 
the distinction between possible and real action. 
Thought looks forward to its manifestation in 
action, but it is built up on past perception and a 
synthesis of our past memories. It is built up on a 
contact with reality, but looks forward to a contact 
with a changed reality. The possibility of error is 
explained by the discrepancy between these two con- 
tacts with the real. This is clear enough in the 
case of what are called false perceptions. We per- 
ceive habitually only a small part of things, we 
notice or attend to only a part of what is in our 
field of vision. Our perception, just because it is 
selective, is discontinuous. Further, we see and 
feel and hear in discontinuous acts of perception 
the same objects, and we have to learn to co-ordinate 
the data of our various senses and the discontinuous 
perceptions of any one sense. This co-ordination 



MATTER AND MEMORY 199 

depends upon experience. From what we already 
see, we continually anticipate what we shall see on 
a change of position or what we shall feel if we put 
our hand on the object. In our ordinary perception 
it is almost impossible to distinguish what we actu- 
ally see and what our past experience preserved in 
memory and in motor habit leads us to expect. 
Hence in circumstances where the usual connections 
of perceptions do not hold, we expect or anticipate 
wrongly, but we seem to be perceiving wrongly. 
While, strictly speaking, a false perception is really 
a false anticipation, to refuse to call it false percep- 
tion is to ignore the extraordinary difficulty of 
saying what in any perception we do actually see. 
This is well exemplified in the case of reading which 
Bergson examines in Matter and Memory. 1 It is a 
common experience, especially with rapid readers, to 
see words on a page which they afterwards find not to 
be there. The explanation is that in reading we do 
not notice more than a small portion of the printed 
letters. The rest is filled up by memory-images. 
Yet actual perception and memory-image are so 
confused together that it is only when our attention 
is arrested by mistakes of this kind that we realise 
what has been happening. 

1 P. 125. 



200 THE PHILOSOPHY OF BERGSON 

If we turn to more developed thinking we find 
there that a great deal of our judging is based on 
insufficient data. From what we perceive and from 
our knowledge of past experience we anticipate 
what will happen in other circumstances. We en- 
tirely mistake the nature of our thought if we think 
of it as apprehending a reality which is all given in 
any one perception, as though we were classifying 
the books on a shelf or apprehending the relations 
of a mathematical figure. We are continually an- 
ticipating from present experience future or possible 
experience, arguing from our knowledge of the 
past. If we say that a statement is verifiable, we 
mean that it involves an anticipation of what will 
happen or what will be perceived under certain 
circumstances. Yet the statement may only have 
been an interpretation of certain data, which sug- 
gested but did not necessitate the anticipated con- 
clusion. Our ordinary judgments are not infallible, 
because we have seldom before us more than a few 
of the data which would really necessitate them. 

Here, again, we may try to distinguish between 
what we really apprehend and the guess or hypo- 
thesis which we build upon our apprehension. We 
may argue that all real thinking is true, and that it 
is only because we must act that we make conclu- 



MATTER AND MEMORY 201 

sions which are not justified. It is true that in many 
cases we act on hypotheses which we know to be 
such, but we habitually neglect to make a distinction. 
Because our thought is turned toward action, we 
cannot rest in indeterminateness, in noting that the 
data are sufficient to warrant some conclusion but 
not the conclusion which is of practical interest to 
us, and this has so affected our ordinary thinking 
that in most cases it is quite impossible to dis- 
tinguish what we really know and what we only 
opine. If we say that when we are really thinking 
we are apprehending reality, and are not making 
mistakes, we have to admit that we cannot always 
determine when we are in this condition, and that 
in any case, far the greater part of what is ordinarily 
called thinking, and most of science, does not fall 
under this category. We noticed that in developed 
thinking the use of language enables us to use action 
for the development of thought, and we can thus 
distinguish certain speculative branches of inquiry 
which in themselves are not affected by practical 
interests and are therefore not so much at the mercy 
of practical needs. It is obvious that there are 
certain inquiries — as, for example, pure mathematics 
— where we reach a certainty far above any we 
can have in our empirical judgments. Bergson's 



202 THE PHILOSOPHY OF BERGSON 

criticism of mathematics applies not to pure mathe- 
matics, but to its application to the objects of 
experience. We know, for example, that the three 
angles of a triangle are equal to two right angles, 
but we can never know whether any individual 
figure drawn on the board is a triangle or not. 
Here, then, we seem to be in a sphere where we 
can separate the purely theoretical inquiry from its 
practical application, and it might seem that there 
error cannot be introduced by the necessities of 
action. 

It is extremely difficult to explain how we 
can make mistakes in mathematics, though we 
quite certainly do. But while in mathematics we 
can and must abstract from any reference to 
action or to what is useful, we cannot conduct 
our thinking without action, without the expres- 
sion of our thoughts in signs and symbols, and 
these symbolic actions may take the place of real 
thinking without our being aware of the substi- 
tution. There is more ground in mathematics 
than elsewhere for saying that we make mistakes 
because we are not thinking, but it is almost as 
impossible there as elsewhere to distinguish when 
we are thinking and when we are not. If we 
could so distinguish, we should not make mistakes. 



MATTER AND MEMORY 203 

The difference between a speculative inquiry like 
mathematics and empirical thinking, is that in the 
former we are trying only to think, in the latter 
we should make no progress at all if we did not 
go beyond what our premisses strictly necessitate. 

Thus far we have been considering how the 
immediate necessities of action are at the root 
of error — a view rather suggested by Bergson than 
explicitly worked out by him. Such errors them- 
selves are not conducive to action, they obviously 
impede it, and in the interests of action must be 
overcome. But in most of what Bergson says 
about the misleading influence of action upon 
thought, he is concerned with more general errors 
which are not contrary to the interests of our 
action or at least of our habitual actions. One 
of them at least he considers conducive to them. 
We have seen that because perception and atten- 
tion are selective they are discontinuous. These 
general errors are the result of taking the dis- 
continuity which is essential to action as the 
characteristic of reality. In the first place, as we 
have seen, our perceptions are already selective 
and because they are discontinuous to our needs 
we have to synthesise and co-ordinate the data 
thus given. In our thinking, then, we seem to 



2o 4 THE PHILOSOPHY OF BERGSON 

start with the discontinuous and connect together 
the separate data given in perception into a whole. 
But in this co-ordination we are not trying to 
synthesise all reality. Our various syntheses have 
their particular purposes. Hence we easily neglect 
the continuous whole with which we started. We 
take the discontinuous contents of perception as 
ultimate irreducible data, not realising that they 
are thus discontinuous because of a work of selec- 
tion and analysis already carried on in perception. 
This leads directly to the associationist account of 
knowledge, as presented in English empiricism, 
which makes the content of single perceptions the 
ultimate data of thought. It is a fundamental 
assumption in Berkeley and Hume that the dis- 
tinctions of sensations are distinctions in reality. 
Hence the philosophical error which Bergson is 
most concerned to refute arises from giving a 
theoretical importance to practical distinctions. 

This error is not confined to psychology and 
English empiricism. If we forget that in all per- 
ception we are selecting from a continuum, we 
may take the distinctive contents of thought as 
the elements not only of mental life but of reality, 
and regard reality as an aggregate or collection 
of parts. But the division of reality into things 



MATTER AND MEMORY 205 

and objects is an artificial distinction made for 
our convenience. Once we begin to ask on what 
principles we determine what is one thing, we find 
that we are in the sphere of the practical and 
convenient. 

That the views here criticised are erroneous 
every one will admit, but it may be objected that 
their refutation is not of much philosophical 
importance at the present time. Associationist 
psychology has long been discarded, and no philo- 
sopher ever attached great weight to the classifica- 
tion of things which ordinary practice dictates. 
But it must have become clear by this time that 
the purpose of much of Bergson's work is to 
show that the erroneous assumptions which are 
the basis of associationist psychology are much 
more far-reaching and subtle than is ordinarily 
supposed. 

If no one would accept without question the 
practical everyday classification of things, many 
philosophers have assumed that reality is an aggre- 
gate of things of some kind. Whether Kant 
really thought that reality is such an aggregate 
is a question of interpretation, but certainly his 
continual emphasis of the synthetic work of 
thought, his failure to insist on the previous 



206 THE PHILOSOPHY OF BERGSON 

analysis which such synthesis implies, has led many 
philosophers who follow him to regard reality as 
a sum — to imagine that the process of thought 
in which we begin with parts and synthesise them 
into a whole is the process of reality. Much of 
modern science has been built up on a similar hypo- 
thesis. There has been considerable discussion as to 
the nature of the ultimate elements of reality, whether 
they are atoms or molecules or units of electricity, 
but very little doubt that reality does consist of some 
such elements. It is only of recent years that phy- 
sics has come to substitute for the atomistic view 
of reality a view which begins by assuming that 
reality is continuous, and that the continuous does 
not admit of construction. 

But it may be further objected that it is as 
difficult to regard reality as a continuum as an 
aggregate. Practical interests may attach too much 
importance to distinctions, and may lead to wrong 
distinctions, but some kind of heterogeneity is surely 
essential to reality. A homogeneous continuum is, 
as we have seen, indistinguishable from nothing. 
This brings us to the most important point in 
Bergson's argument. He is far from denying that 
reality is heterogeneous, that there are distinctions 
and articulations in it, but he argues that such dis- 



MATTER AND MEMORY 207 

tinctions are not clear cut, and that " all division 
of matter into independent bodies with absolutely 
determined outlines is an artificial division." * We 
can and do make clear distinctions between what is 
and what is not of importance for our action. We 
have to admit that in reality everything in the uni- 
verse is related to everything else, but we know 
that for practical purposes many of these relations 
may be ignored. We have seen that counting im- 
plies that the things which we count can be regarded 
as identical for the purposes of our sum. In all 
application of mathematics to existing things, we 
have lines for the purposes of our calculations taken 
as straight, surfaces taken as planes. If we fail to 
realise that this ignoring of fine distinctions and of 
the individuality and uniqueness of all distance is 
dictated by practical considerations, we come to 
regard reality as being really mathematical, as mani- 
festing the sharp distinctions which we make for 
the purposes of action. 

The theories, which emphasise the influence that 
considerations of convenience have upon thinking, 
frequently meet with the answer that thinking would 
not be convenient if it did not follow reality. This 
answer has only a limited application. For in 

1 Matter and Memory, p. 259. 



208 THE PHILOSOPHY OF BERGSON 

action, and therefore in preparation for action, it 
may be convenient to ignore some of the articula- 
tions of reality, to concern ourselves with its rela- 
tion to us, and with the manner in which we can act 
upon it, instead of studying its real articulation. We 
are primarily concerned with our specific needs and 
purposes, and we tend to regard reality as so much 
stuff to be cut up in their service, or as matter 
upon which we are to impress form. It is true, of 
course, that we cannot entirely ignore the differences 
in reality, but we attend to them as they suit our 
various purposes. Hence we get the notion of a 
reality which we can divide according to any prin- 
ciple we please, and hence the conception of abstract 
space. For although all counting implies the re- 
cognition of real differences in reality, yet just 
because we can notice or ignore some differences for 
some purposes and some for others, we can con- 
sider the general laws of counting and measuring in 
abstraction from the particular nature of the ele- 
ments counted or measured, and deal only with the 
divisible as such. We may even hold that just 
because the differences we count are selected for 
their relation to our particular purposes, we ought, 
when we are trying to view reality as it is, and to 
transcend the misleading influence of action, to 



MATTER AND MEMORY 209 

ignore differences altogether, instead of observing 
the differences which are vital to the object. Then 
we come to think that in regarding the existing 
world as a sort of geometrical framework, or a 
mathematical system of points, we are regarding 
it as it really is, whereas we are regarding it in 
the way which is most generally practical. 

As the exigencies of action lead us to ignore the 
real articulation of things, so do they lead us to 
misrepresent the nature of change and movement. 
For because in our action upon a moving body we 
are concerned with where it will be when we act, we 
attend to the positions through which moving bodies 
pass, rather than to the movements themselves. 
We are concerned with what will be the state of 
things when we act, and we think of change as a 
series of such states, as we think of movement as a 
series of points. Change is not uniform, and move- 
ments are not all homogeneous, but we are conscious 
primarily of the discontinuity of our own duration, 
and concern ourselves with the relation of other 
changes to that. Hence we treat as instantaneous, 
motions which are so rapid that for our purposes their 
time may be ignored, or when we come to see that 
what we took to be simple qualities perceived in- 
stantaneously really imply enormously rapid motion, 



210 THE PHILOSOPHY OF BERGSON 

we think of the real universe as one in which quan- 
titative differences are unreal, and all movement is 
homogeneous. Hence the conception of homo- 
geneous time, like that of homogeneous space, is the 
creation of practical needs. 

Such are the general errors into which thought 
is led by its preoccupation with practice. Bergson 
does not consider them incapable of correction. 
For, as we have already pointed out, it is a mistake 
to regard the needs of action as fixed and final. 
Knowledge serves our purposes, but in its turn 
enlarges them. As the scope of our purposes 
widens, they are concerned not with an almost 
instantaneous present, but with a period of time 
in which we can follow real change without ; we 
find a relevancy in more and more of the details of 
reality until we can conceive the general purpose 
of disinterested knowledge, of knowing reality not 
as it is related to the discontinuity of our ordinary 
purposes but as it is in itself. This disinterested 
purpose implies philosophy whose task Bergson 
thus describes : — 

" Our knowledge of things is not relative to 
the fundamental structure of our mind, but only 
to its superficial and acquired habits, to the con- 
tingent form which it derives from our bodily 



MATTER AND MEMORY 211 

functions and from our lower needs. The re- 
lativity of knowledge may not, then, be definitive. 
By unmaking that which these needs have made, 
we may restore to intuition its original purity and 
so recover contact with the real. This method 
presents, in its application, difficulties which are 
considerable and ever recurrent, because it demands 
for the solution of each new problem an entirely 
new effort. To give up certain habits of thinking 
and even of perceiving, is far from easy ; yet this 
is but the negative part of the work to be done ; 
and when it is done, when we have placed ourselves 
at what we have called the turn of experience, when 
we have profited by the faint light which, illumi- 
nating the passage from the immediate to the useful, 
marks the dawn of our human experience, there still 
remains to be reconstituted, with the infinitely small 
elements which we thus perceive of the real curve, 
the curve itself stretching out into the darkness behind 
them. . . . The final effort of philosophical research 
is a true work of integration." 1 

The consideration of this philosophical method, 
its contrast with ordinary intelligence and the view 
of reality which is presented to it, is best set forth in 
Creative Evolution and the Introduction to Metapkysic, 
which we shall now proceed to examine. 

1 Matter and Memory, pp. 241-42. 



CHAPTER V 

INTELLIGENCE AND INTUITION 

We noticed in our introductory chapter that Bergson 
maintains that theory of knowledge and theory of 
life are inseparable. * This statement might naturally 
be taken to imply that knowledge could be fully 
explained by its history, and raises in our minds 
the objection that knowledge can only be explained 
by itself. But the discussion at the end of the last 
chapter may show the possibility of another in- 
terpretation. For we have seen there that the 
relation of knowing to acting is not only the key 
to the existence of error in our ordinary thinking, 
of failures in the end which that thinking con- 
sciously sets before itself, but also explains how 
the exigencies of habitual actions cause certain more 
fundamental errors as to the nature of thought 
itself. The theory of life, then, may illuminate 
the theory of knowledge if it shows us more clearly 
the history of the mutual interaction of thought and 

1 Creative Evolution, p. xiii. 



212 



INTELLIGENCE AND INTUITION 213 

action. Creative Evolution is largely concerned with 
this history. If we take a general view of the evolu- 
tion of life from its lowest to its highest forms, 
we find life continually winning new triumphs over 
the obstacles of matter and continually being de- 
feated by the very instruments of its triumph. For 
life is impossible without habit and without the 
stability and permanence which habit implies. 
Yet if habits become too securely established, if 
they become masters when they ought to be servants, 
they hinder the power of adaptability to new cir- 
cumstances which is the essence of life, and progress 
ceases. Thought is the greatest of the instruments 
which life has invented. Its development in man 
has raised man above all other forms of life. It has 
been potent not only in satisfying the needs of which 
man was originally conscious, but even more in de- 
veloping and enlarging those needs themselves. 
But thought itself may, by its very success in 
solving some of the problems of life, become set 
in habits and assume habitual tendencies and in- 
terests which hinder it from solving those problems 
which in its moments of highest insight it can set 
before itself. 

We have noticed how in ordinary action the 
purposes of conscious life are set over against 



2i 4 THE PHILOSOPHY OF BERGSON 

the world in which they are to be satisfied ; how 
external reality comes to be regarded as mere 
matter upon which life is to set its form, as a 
stable element in which the movement of life may 
select its temporary starting-points and ends, and 
how in this manner the influence of the exigencies 
of ordinary action may disable thought in the 
fulfilment of its highest interest, the desire to 
apprehend reality as it is. 

This influence, we have seen, extends itself even 
to speculative thinking. By the use of language 
we escape from the necessities of immediate action, 
and turn action to the use and development of 
thought ; but these necessities have already set 
their mark upon language, so that it is instinct 
with certain assumptions which are useful in 
ordinary action, but fatal to its speculative in- 
terests, with the result that when we seem to 
be concerned with purely theoretical inquiries, 
our thought is still shaped by the influence of 
practical ends, and is turned by that influence into 
contradictions and antinomies. 

Discovery of error is the first step towards cor- 
recting it. As the mind has already freed itself 
from the close subserviency of immediate practical 
ends in the advance from ordinary practical thinking 



INTELLIGENCE AND INTUITION 215 

to the organised sciences, its further task is to free 
itself from the more subtle influences of these ends, 
and to rise from science to philosophy. It is with 
the possibility of accomplishing this further task 
that we are now concerned. 

We noticed in the introductory chapter that this 
movement of thought is dictated by the difficulties 
of science itself. The general considerations which 
we were then discussing were suggested by certain 
problems in psychology and biology. For these 
seemed to be inquiries where a recognition of 
individuality was an essential part of the scientific 
method. The distinction between two methods of 
thought which the difference between the biological 
and the mathematical sciences suggests might seem 
to be dictated by the different natures of their 
subject-matter. Bergson in Creative Evolution 
begins with some such contrast, comparing the 
success of science in the inorganic sphere with 
its failure in the sphere of life. u The human 
instinct feels at home among inanimate objects, 
more especially among solids, where our action 
finds its fulcrum and our industry its tools . . . 
our intellect triumphs in geometry, wherein is 
revealed the kinship of logical thought with un- 
organised matter . . . our thought in its logical 



216 THE PHILOSOPHY OF BERGSON 

form is incapable of presenting the true nature of 
life." x But we have seen in Chapter III. that the 
attempt to distinguish sharply between these spheres 
of reality breaks down. A purely quantitative pre- 
sentation of the inorganic is impossible, because it 
is impossible even there to ignore all qualitative 
differences, and especially because it makes the con- 
ception of motion impossible. On the other hand, 
the contrast of two kinds of intelligibility was found 
within the sphere of duration itself. However 
contradictory a mathematical conception of con- 
scious life may be, it is impossible to regard life as 
lying altogether outside the sphere of mathematical 
inquiry. We have not, then, to deal with two 
separate and distinct spheres, each demanding a 
special method of study. Science is indeed more 
at home in the sphere of the inorganic, but it can 
be applied to life. The ideal of intuition is harder 
to realise in our apprehension of external phenomena, 
but without such a realisation we can only give an 
inadequate explanation of them. The difference 
between intelligence (to use the word which, in 
Creative Evolution^ Bergson applies to the strictly 
scientific method) and intuition is partly a differ- 
ence of methods accounted for by a difference of 

1 Creative Evolution, pp. x., xi. 



INTELLIGENCE AND INTUITION 217 

sphere ; intelligence is more adapted to the inor- 
ganic, intuition to life ; but even more is it accounted 
for by a difference in purpose — in the kind of 
explanation sought. Further, just because this 
contrast of material is not rigid, the two methods 
themselves are not independent. Bergson's fondness 
for beginning with sharp contrasts disguises his 
recognition of this fact, but he does recognise it. 
Each method uses the other. 

If this is the case, the method of philosophy 
cannot involve a mere turning back on the methods 
of science, a reaction to feeling or the irrational. 
Intuition must be more, not less, rational than 
science. As life progresses not by giving up the 
methods which have already secured success, but by 
combining with them some element which they 
had neglected, so philosophy must not ignore the 
immense advance which science has made upon 
ordinary unscientific thinking, but must try to 
combine with scientific method an element which 
that advance has neglected. " Reality itself, in 
the profoundest meaning of the word, is reached 
by the combined and progressive development of 
science and philosophy." 1 

We have already seen that intelligence tends to 

1 Creative Evolution, p. 210. 



218 THE PHILOSOPHY OF BERGSON 

distort our apprehension of reality by neglecting the 
individual, in the contrast between instinct and 
intelligence. In Creative Evolution Bergson pre- 
sents this defect in a new way. It is part of his 
exposition of the connection of theory of life with 
theory of knowledge to show these two faculties 
as specialised forms of consciousness, each having 
something that the other lacks, to argue that 
intelligence has won its great achievements by a 
development that is one-sided, and to suggest in 
his account of instinct what it is that intelligence 
must acquire to become philosophy. 

We are not concerned here with the adequacy 
of Bergson's account of instinct in animals. He 
follows his usual method of sharp contrast. He 
is describing two tendencies which exist in all 
conscious life, and he pictures instinct as it would 
be if intelligence were entirely absent from it, in- 
telligence as it would be devoid of instinct, while 
insisting that in reality this sharp division does not 
exist. For the purposes of our inquiry the moral to 
be drawn from a consideration of instinct is clear 
enough. If we examine the behaviour of animals 
in whom instinct is very highly developed, we 
find elaborate and organised behaviour in special 
situations, which would seem, when considered in 



INTELLIGENCE AND INTUITION 219 

isolation, to argue a very high degree of intelligence, 
combined with an utter incapacity for solving quite 
simple difficulties, which are at all unfamiliar. A 
paralysing wasp behaves towards its victim as though 
it were "a learned entomologist and a skilful surgeon 
in one." 1 But that it will be able to behave towards 
other insects of a not very dissimilar structure as 
a learned entomologist and a skilful surgeon is a 
most mistaken inference to draw. In an unfamiliar 
situation the wasp is entirely helpless. 

The nature of instinct is a puzzle to us, because 
we take for granted that a power of dealing intelli- 
gently with one situation implies a power of dealing 
with another related to it, provided that the second 
is not more complicated. The characteristic of in- 
telligence as opposed to instinct is its adaptability, 
its power of grasping the general element in a 
situation, and relating it with past situations. This 
power may be purchased by loss of that perfect 
mastery over a special situation in which instinct 
rules. So modern industry, dominated by scientific 
inventions and methods, encourages general adapta- 
bility and kills craftsmanship. Indeed the advan- 
tages and defects of machine production as compared 
to skilled handicraft strikingly bring out the point 

1 Creative Evolution, p. 153. 



220 THE PHILOSOPHY OF BERGSON 

of Bergson's contrast between instinct and intelli- 
gence. For in pursuance of his general connection 
of thought and action, he connects intelligence with 
the invention and development of tools, the last 
stage of which is modern machine production. The 
animal's instruments of action are organic, parts of 
himself. They are more complex and perfect than 
any tool, but yet far more limited in their range. 
Man, using inorganic tools, gains a much greater 
power by varying his tools and thereby suiting his 
actions to the most varied circumstances. His 
action gains in wideness of range what it may 
lose in fineness of individual touch. As his tools 
develop they become standardised and made of 
standardised parts. He is concerned with things, 
not as individuals, but as displaying identity. They 
take on for him the likeness of his tools, are measured 
by fixed standards, and resolved into varying com- 
plexes of standardised parts. The contrast between 
skilled handicraft and machine production shows us 
that the contrast which Bergson makes between 
instinct and intelligence finds its place also within 
human activity. For here too we find on one 
side a skill which depends on familiar acquaintance 
with particular objects ; the hand of the craftsman 
is subdued to the matter on which he works. 



INTELLIGENCE AND INTUITION 221 

There is a close connection between his hand and 
his particular tool, between the violinist's fingers 
and his bow, which, just because it is something 
infinitely more subtle that could be expressed in 
rules, we naturally call sympathy : and just because 
this skill is specialised, it has a relatively narrow 
range. On the other hand the machine works by 
repetition. Its invention requires insight — some- 
thing that equally with the artist's skill is beyond 
the reach of rules ; but its use is mechanical, and 
because it works by repetition there is no individu- 
ality in its products. 

As in action, so in thought, we may mark the 
contrast between the appreciation of individual 
differences, too slight and subtle to be reduced to 
rule, which is based on long familiarity, and the 
methods of thought which we can reduce to rules 
and apply to the most varying material in that we 
neglect the differences of the individual objects and 
concern ourselves with their common relations — a 
method displayed most clearly in counting and its 
development in statistical methods. 

It is to this tendency of thought that Bergson 
gives the name intelligence. For the doctrines 
which he has been combating regard reality as 
that which can be counted, as consisting of repe- 



222 THE PHILOSOPHY OF BERGSON 

titions of identical parts, and ignore the individuality 
and movement of things which cannot be reduced 
to rule, or truly regarded as but the manifestation 
of a law ; and they are the natural product of those 
sciences which are concerned with the application 
of mathematical methods to reality. Intelligence, 
according to Bergson, uses words as tools. Its 
concepts are regarded as fixed and definite, and 
we can use and manipulate them as though they 
were tools. Like tools, they were not got without 
some vivifying insight, but once obtained they are 
used as symbols or counters of work that has been 
done. Their application depends on the principle 
of repetition, the law of causation that the same 
produces the same. Thus the intellect works with 
what is given, and seeks not to apprehend the 
individuality of the real, but to " reconstitute it 
with given, and consequently with stable, elements." * 
Logic, in that it considers the relations between 
concepts independently of the individuals to which 
they apply, is " the complete set of rules that must 
be followed in using symbols." 2 Its principles go 
back ultimately to the law of identity. Its methods, 
whether by deduction or induction, are based upon 

1 Creative Evolution, p. 173. 

2 Ibid. p. 169. 



INTELLIGENCE AND INTUITION 223 

the same law. " Intuition implies that qualities can 
be superimposed on each other like magnitudes." * 
Hence the metaphysic which is based on such logic 
views the world as a thing manufactured, the 
individual as a mosaic put together of previously 
existing elements, a time -process as a series of 
pictures made into one motion, as are the separate 
snapshots of a cinematograph film. 

This account of language and logic has been 
criticised, and with some justice. For it would 
seem to reduce intelligence to a bare apprehension of 
identity which would make all thought impossible, 
and any intelligent logic must surely be more than 
that. The attempt to construct a formal logic 
which should be entirely independent of the matter 
of thought has long been discarded. Since the logic 
of identity is as dead as associationist psychology, 
Bergson seems at first sight to be only flogging a 
dead horse. On consideration we find that the 
results of Bergson's criticism are more far-reaching 
than those of former critics, that unlike previous 
criticism of the logic of identity he not only rejects 
its obviously wrong conclusions, but really discovers 
the root of its errors. 

This will become clear if we consider two 

1 Creative Evolution, p. 228. 



224 THE PHILOSOPHY OF BERGSON 

obvious objections which may be made to Bergson's 
account of intelligence. 

Bergson, as we have seen, connects intelligence 
with space and measuring, and especially with 
mathematics. The logic and the metaphysic which 
he attacks are based upon the mathematical sciences. 
Yet surely, it may be urged, it is a grievous mistake 
to regard mathematics as the result of a movement 
of thought which is based only upon the law of 
identity. Does not mathematics involve imagina- 
tion and the insight of genius as much as any other 
form of inquiry ? Can it really be said to depend 
upon repetition, or to be a mere reconstruction of 
the given? These questions can admit of but one 
answer. 

But we must remember one point in the analogy 
of intelligence with the using of tools which is of 
importance here. The use of the machine may be 
mechanical, but its invention is not. That requires 
the insight of genius. Similarly, when Bergson says 
that intelligence uses concepts like tools he does 
not mean that the concepts themselves are the work 
of intelligence as he describes it. We noticed in 
his analysis of counting in Time and Free Will 
that he described each number as in itself the work 
of an individual intuition. In an article in the 



INTELLIGENCE AND INTUITION 225 

Revue de Metaphysique et de Morale? he describes as 
a misrepresentation a criticism of his account of 
geometry in Creative Evolution which assumed that 
he regarded geometrical intelligence as something 
rigid and incapable of evolution. In the Introduction 
to Metaphysic, he makes his meaning clearer. He 
is concerned there with the contrast between intel- 
ligence and intuition, and asserts that intuition, as 
he describes it, is nothing new. " A more pro- 
found history of human thought would show that 
we owe to it all that is greatest in the exact 
sciences as well as all that deserves to live in meta- 
physic. The greatest of the methods of inquiry 
at the disposal of the human spirit, infinitesimal 
analysis, came from this reversal of thought. At 
the same time " (and here he comes to the important 
point) " that method has only been able to attain to 
its wonderful applications through the invention of 
definite symbols, and if intuition, as we describe 
it, originated the invention, it was the symbol alone 
that made the application possible. But metaphysic, 
which is not concerned with application^ can and must 
refrain from translating intuition into symbols." 2 
Bergson is criticising not the principles of 

1 January 1908. 

2 Introduction to Metaphysic^ G. T. p. 43. Italics mine. 



226 THE PHILOSOPHY OF BERGSON 

mathematics, but the assumptions underlying the applica- 
tion of mathematics. He is not denying the reality 
of mathematical universals, but asserting that they 
are not the only universals. There is imagination 
and intuition in pure mathematics, there is none in 
the use of a table of logarithms or tables of com- 
pound interest. Such calculations can be done by 
a machine. Intuition is wanted to apprehend the 
principle of the syllogism, but that intuition, when 
reduced to symbols, can also be worked by a 
machine. 

This distinction between the intuition and its 
application is so important that it is worth while 
elaborating it. For neglect of it will be as fatal 
to the understanding of Bergson as it has often 
been to the understanding of Kant. The distinction 
may best be realised in the attitude taken up 
towards mathematics by Plato and Kant. Plato 
distinguished sharply between the apprehension of 
mathematical truth, which he regarded as certain 
and infallible, and its application to the world of 
becoming and decay. The first was, the second 
was not and could not be, knowledge. Always 
when Plato is talking of knowledge he is thinking 
of the apprehension of the pure universal, not of 
the use which may afterwards be made of that 



INTELLIGENCE AND INTUITION 227 

apprehension in the better ordering of the parti- 
culars of the world of sense. That, partaking as 
it does of the nature of the infinite, cannot be the 
subject of knowledge. Plato is one with Bergson 
in insisting that true knowledge must dispense 
with symbols. For both, knowledge is immediate 
apprehension, an act of the spirit. Bergson differs 
from Plato in that he holds that the latter took 
the mathematical universal as the type of all uni- 
versal, and hence denied the reality of time and 
of change. 

Unlike Plato, Kant is not concerned with the 
problems of pure mathematics at all. He never 
admits for a moment that the apprehension of 
pure mathematical truth constitutes a problem or 
admits of a deduction. He is concerned with the 
problems raised by the great development of physics 
and applied mathematics, as Plato was with those 
raised by the development of pure mathematics. 
He never asks how are mathematics true : he is 
concerned to discover how they are applicable to 
the world we perceive with our senses, how the 
truths which the understanding apprehends can 
be held a -priori to be valid of the world which 
is given to perception. Most modern thinkers are 
similarly concerned with questions raised by the 



228 THE PHILOSOPHY OF BERGSON 

applied sciences, and unlike Plato they seek the test 
of truth not in its own apprehension, but in the 
character of its results when applied, their coherency 
or systematic nature, or even their usefulness. 

It is significant that a modern philosopher like 
Mr. Bertrand Russell, whose interest is pre-emi- 
nently in pure mathematics, holds a doctrine as to 
the nature of truth very like Plato's, and in his 
distinction between what is and what exists has 
revived the Platonic distinction of the world of 
knowledge and the world of opinion. Bergson 
shares the modern interest in the subjects treated 
in the biological sciences. But in his conception of 
philosophic insight he follows Plato. He is con- 
cerned to discover whether, instead of studying the 
facts of life indirectly by the application to them 
of mathematical principles, they can be apprehended 
with the immediacy of philosophy. 

With this distinction in our minds we may 
examine the second objection, which bears more 
specially on Bergson's account of induction. Pro- 
fessor Bosanquet, in a paper read before the Aristo- 
telian Society, has criticised Bergson's statement that 
induction rests on the principle of identity, pointing 
out that such a doctrine reduces judgment to mere 
tautology, showing that if we examine the process 



INTELLIGENCE AND INTUITION 229 

by which any induction is actually reached in science, 
we find that it implies a process of active thought 
and insight which could not be reduced to rule. 
Further, he argues that what we apprehend in in- 
duction is not a simple identity, but a real universal ; 
induction implies insight into the real concrete unity 
of the individual cases examined. 

It is true that Bergson, by insisting that de- 
duction and induction are both built upon a 
mathematical basis, tends to ignore in them every 
element but that of quantitative analysis. We have 
suggested already in Chapter III. that he pays little 
attention to the part played in empirical science by 
the observation of likeness and unlikeness, leading 
us to dwell for ourselves on the side he passes over. 
The perception of qualitative differences and the 
estimation of their significance cannot be eliminated 
from the processes of empirical science. As we 
have seen, the principle of the law of causation that 
like produces like does not imply an identity between 
cause and effect. The relation between cause and 
effect cannot be deduced merely from an analysis 
of the cause. It implies a perception of change 
which could not be reduced to identity. If it be 
objected that the principle of causation as used 
in induction is false because in reality a change is 



2 3 o THE PHILOSOPHY OF BERGSON 

caused by all other preceding changes, and any such 
isolation as causation implies is therefore misleading, 
the answer is that to assert that all the past is equally 
connected with any particular event is to deny real 
individuality, and to regard reality as a system in 
which qualitative differences are of no importance. 
The apprehension of a causal relation, then, implies 
some appreciation of individuality. It works on a 
basis of recognising likeness and unlikeness between 
qualities, but it is not simply a mechanical appli- 
cation of the principle that behind likeness there is 
identity. Rather it implies a power of distinguishing 
between relevant and irrelevant likenesses, and of 
forming a conception of a real union of qualities. 

But these arguments are all concerned with the 
nature of the apprehension of a causal relation, not 
with what is implicit in its application to other cases. 
To see that A causes B requires insight and appre- 
hension of individual characteristics. When we say 
" This is like A, and therefore its effect will be like 
B," we are applying a result of that insight, and we 
are concerned with A only in so far as it resembles 
A. That implies that A repeats A, for its dif- 
ference with A must for our purpose be ignored. 
Hence, although in the original apprehension of 
causal relation we may not isolate the cause from 



INTELLIGENCE AND INTUITION 231 

its surroundings more than the individuality of the 
circumstances demand, in applying our apprehension 
and turning it into a rule, we effect an artificial 
isolation. For we are concerned only with what 
we treat as repetitions of A, and actually if we 
are dealing with a process of real change repeti- 
tion is impossible. Further, in science very much 
of the work of tracing causal relations is a work 
of analysis. For the changes which at first sight 
seem to be simple are found to be themselves a com- 
plex of simpler changes, and these simpler changes 
are known by their identity to simpler changes 
already studied. The whole change is understood 
as a new complex of old elements. Repetition, 
then, and quantitative analysis are implied in the 
working of inductive methods in science, and if 
Bergson's account seems to neglect other elements, 
it is because he is concerned with intellect as opposed 
to intuition, and with the way in which the mathe- 
matical implications of the intellect dominate scien- 
tific conceptions of causality. Working out, then, 
of causal relations would be impossible were the 
causal relations not apprehended by methods other 
than those which guide their application. This is 
only to repeat that the using of machines and their 
invention need very different powers of mind and 



232 THE PHILOSOPHY OF BERGSON 

principles of thought. Yet intuition and intelli- 
gence are not isolated, though they are contrasted 
tendencies of thought. A process whose main 
purpose falls under the head of intelligence may 
involve the use of intuition, and vice versa. 

The application of intuition which implies re- 
petition also makes possible prediction. Science, 
unlike philosophy, is concerned with application 
because from its practical interests it is concerned 
to predict. The real distinction between intuition 
and intelligence lies, as we suggested, in their 
criterion of truth. As the test of mathematical 
truth lies only in its apprehension, so there can 
be no verification of intuition. But science, because 
it is concerned to predict, places the test of the 
truth of its intuition in experiment, in being able 
to say " If such and such conditions are arranged, 
such and such results will follow," implying that 
the experiment can be repeated. But because in 
some subjects of inquiry it is less possible to ignore 
individual differences than in others, the method 
of experiment and prediction is not always equally 
adequate. In the sciences which deal with life the 
inadequacy of the method is most patent, because 
the individual differences which a study of repeti- 
tions ignores are most important. The purpose 



INTELLIGENCE AND INTUITION 233 

of science remains the same. But the method 
pursued in biological science will depend on the 
stress which is laid on the necessity for intuition 
in the apprehension of causal relations or on the 
element of repetition and identity in the applica- 
tion of such intuition. For it is possible to realise 
that when we have to deal with individuals which 
exhibit a common structure but are not identical, 
the verification of causal relations by experiment 
may demand intuition equally with their discovery, 
and that it may require as much real insight to see 
the common character of the results of the experi- 
ments as it did to see the common character of 
those cases from a study of which the theory to 
be verified was produced. When this happens, 
the contrast between intuition and its application 
is disappearing, science is becoming more like 
philosophy as Bergson describes it, but its results 
have not the rigour and clean-cut nature of the 
exact sciences. On the other hand, if we insist 
that the ideal of scientific method must be mathe- 
matical, we are confined in the study of life to 
those characteristics which really repeat themselves, 
and we must ignore the individual differences of 
cases. Our results will then apply to the mass 
but not to any one individual. This is seen clearly 



234 THE PHILOSOPHY OF BERGSON 

enough in the application of statistical methods to 
the sciences of life. Just because in making their 
inquiries they ignore the individual, on the in- 
dividual their results have no bearing. They are 
concerned with averages and mass results. They 
approximate to the calculations of chances in 
gambling, the results of which hold for " the 
long run " of the game, but have no application 
to any individual throw. For in such calculation 
we ignore the causes which determine the result of 
any single throw, and are concerned simply with 
the conditions under which all throws take place. 
Because the determining causes of individual cases 
cannot be ignored, what is to happen " in the long 
run " may never take place in actual fact. Similarly, 
the averages of the biometrician or the sociologist 
throw no light on the individual ; they only state 
the conditions common to all individuals or the 
limits within which their activity finds scope, and 
there is this difference between their results and 
those of the calculation of chances in gaming that 
the activity of the individuals which they ignore 
may alter the conditions with which the statistical 
methods are concerned. Statistical methods of 
sociology have their use for practical purposes, 
when our practice is concerned not with individuals 



INTELLIGENCE AND INTUITION 235 

but with their conditions. Legislation, for example, 
is concerned to modify the external conditions of 
life, and therefore necessarily relies upon statistical 
methods. But to seek to obtain from such methods 
an apprehension of historical change is to ignore the 
part played by individuality in history. 

The sciences, then, if they are exact and able to 
predict in so far as they are mathematical, gain 
their exactness by ignoring individuality. They are 
adequate in the sphere of spatial relations where in- 
dividuality can be ignored. In the sphere of life their 
prediction loses its certainty, and such prediction 
as is possible is only achieved by the sciences adopt- 
ing the method of philosophy or by their confining 
themselves to the production of results which are 
useful for practical purposes, but have only a narrow 
application to reality. We must now turn to the 
contrasted method, and ask whether it is possible to 
have an insight into the development of life which 
shall have the immediacy of insight into mathematical 
truth. 

The difficulty of the task lies in the nature of 
the reality we have to apprehend. The certainty 
of mathematical insight depends on the self-con- 
tained nature of mathematical relations. We can 
hold together in one synthesis all the relevant data. 



236 THE PHILOSOPHY OF BERGSON 

How can we similarly synthesise a process which 
goes beyond the limits of our perception both in 
space and time ? We can never in this sphere 
attain the certainty of mathematical insight, for 
our synthesis must always be imperfect. Certainly 
we can do nothing to any good purpose by giving 
up that enlargement of the compass and grasp 
of our perception which we owe to science. To 
fall back upon feeling is to shut ourselves in the 
narrowest limits of our own personality. Intuition 
must supplement and not dispense with science. 
"Concepts/' says Bergson, "are indispensable to 
it, for all other sciences work with concepts, and 
metaphysic cannot do without the other sciences." 1 
How, then, does it differ from science ? 

It differs first of all, as we have seen, in its 
purpose. It attempts to apprehend reality, not in 
the light or as it may serve the particular pur- 
poses of action, but as it is in itself. For this 
reason it must be, like art, disinterested, or rather, 
like art, interested only in its object. And intui- 
tion implies sympathy, in the sense at least of caring 
enough about things to know them in their own 
nature. 

But Bergson seems to say that intuition implies 

1 Introduction to Metapkysic, G. T. p. 13. 



INTELLIGENCE AND INTUITION 237 

sympathy in a further sense, the sympathy that 
enables us to assume the nature of other things 
and feel with them. We have already noticed in 
an examination of our knowledge of motion the 
misleading suggestions of such language, as seeming 
sometimes to imply that thought and accurate know- 
ledge is an impediment to philosophy. But we 
shall understand Bergson's meaning better if we 
recall the analogy of instinct. He is thinking of 
that close acquaintance with an object which is 
gained only by long experience with it, an acquaint- 
ance constructed out of a synthesis of innumerable 
details and subtle discriminations. "It is impos- 
sible to have an intuition of reality, that is an 
intellectual sympathy with its innermost nature, 
unless its confidence has been won by a long com- 
radeship with its external manifestations." x The 
quotation is in some degree metaphorical. A 
passage preceding it makes his point clearer, and 
is worth quoting at some length : " This faculty is 
in no way mysterious. Every one of us has had 
opportunities to exercise it in some degree. Any 
one, for example, who has been engaged in literary 
production, knows perfectly well that after long 
study has been given to the subject, when all docu- 

1 Introduction to Metaphysic^ G. T. p. 57. 



238 THE PHILOSOPHY OF BERGSON 

merits have been collected and all sketches made, 
one thing more is necessary — an effort, often painful, 
to set oneself in the heart of the subject and get 
from it an impulse as profound as possible, when 
there is nothing more to be done than to follow it. 
This impulse, once received, sets the spirit on a 
path where it finds again all the information it had 
collected and a thousand other details. The im- 
pulse develops itself, analyses itself in expressions, 
whose enumeration might be infinite ; the further 
you go on, the more is revealed ; never can you say 
everything that is to be said ; and yet if you turn 
back to apprehend the impulse you feel behind you, 
it is hidden from you. For it was nothing but a 
direction of movement, and although capable of 
infinite development, it is simplicity itself. Meta- 
physical intuition seems to be of the same kind. 
Here the counterpart of the sketches and docu- 
ments of literary production is the totality of the 
observations and experiences collected by the positive 
sciences." 1 

There is from the nature of the case vagueness 
in a description of this kind. But, as we have seen, 
all empirical inquiry implies some such power of 
gathering from observation of many details an 

1 Introduction to Metaphysics, G. T. p. 56. 



INTELLIGENCE AND INTUITION 239 

insight into the reality which they manifest. It 
is a process which cannot be reduced to rules, for 
it is always in itself a creative act. Two suggestions 
may be offered to show that the process, if vaguely 
described, does not therefore imply vague and 
nebulous thinking. The first is a reference to the 
well-known passage in Plato's Seventh Epistle, 
where Plato says of his own metaphysic : " It 
cannot be put into words as can other inquiries, but 
after long intercourse with the thing itself and after 
it has been lived with, suddenly, as when the fire 
leaps up and the light kindles, it is found in the 
soul and feeds itself there." And after describing, 
much in the manner of Bergson, the inadequacy 
of language and of our instruments of inquiry, 
both conceptual and perceptual, says that the only 
way of overcoming this inadequacy is not to give 
up what instruments we have : rather, after long 
rubbing together of perceptions and definitions, the 
apprehension of the real will suddenly flame forth. 1 

The second suggestion is a reference to the 
example of history. Bergson unfortunately has 
paid no attention to the nature of historical 
inquiry, but it admirably illustrates his account 
of intuition. For history implies scientific method 

1 Plato, Epistles, vii. 341, 344. 



2 4 o THE PHILOSOPHY OF BERGSON 

and careful and accurate collocation of particular 
facts. But it is itself more than a science. If it 
attempts to regard its facts as the mere outcome of 
laws, or the inevitable unrolling of a plan known 
from the beginning, it does injustice to the indi- 
viduality of its subjects, and distorts its facts. 
History never repeats itself. But it is not a 
mere collocation of facts, for it is a synthesis of 
them — a synthesis for which there are no rules ; 
its success depends on the individual insight of the 
historian, and on his intimate and long acquaintance 
with the facts to be synthesised. History (and in 
this respect philosophy is like it) is both science and 
art. It follows science in the wideness and compre- 
hension of its scope and mastery of detail ; it is like 
art in that it is the work of genius. 

The analogy of history will also help us to 
consider how we may know whether or not an 
intuition is true. Neither history nor philosophy 
admit of verification in the ordinary sense of the 
word, for verification implies repetition. The 
test of a great history is the extent to which it 
enables us to understand and have insight into the 
past ; for the facts of history, although they could 
not have been predicted, are intelligible if we look 
back upon them rightly. The test of a great history 



INTELLIGENCE AND INTUITION 241 

is not only that it is correct in its details and 
facts, though that is essential, but that it makes 
us understand them. Philosophic intuitions must 
be faithful to the facts of science ; whether they are 
so or not only science can tell us. It must also 
make us understand these facts, and there is no fact 
which will tell us that that is accomplished save 
the process itself. 

A further illustration of the nature of Bergson's 
conception of philosophical method may be found in 
his own method of exposition. We have already seen 
that that involves analysis. Indeed, its difficulty lies 
in its abstractness. Bergson separates tendencies 
which in reality are never separate, duration and 
extensity, quality and quantity, time and space, 
instinct and intelligence, and develops their separate 
implications. Neither side of these contrasts could 
exist separately, nor do they merely lie side by side 
in reality. But reality can only be understood if 
we first analyse separately the tendencies we can 
distinguish in it, and then by an act of synthesis see 
the whole afresh. Because that act is an intuition, 
we can be helped towards making it by concrete 
pictures, in which we see as one what the previous 
analysis has divided. Hence the importance and 
value of Bergson's wonderful illustrations. They 



242 THE PHILOSOPHY OF BERGSON 

help us to see in one act of thought the reality he is 
describing. Both sides of the method are indis- 
pensable. Were there no analysis the pictures 
would become mere misleading metaphors, for our 
thought would rest in the picture and take that for 
the reality. Were there no pictures, it would rest 
in the analysis and lose itself in abstractions. Only 
" by rubbing the two together " can the flame of 
intuition burst forth. 

If this, then, be the method of philosophy, what 
is the nature of reality as revealed by it ? Obviously 
that cannot be described adequately, but can only 
be apprehended in the process. But we may 
note how the double need for intuition and 
analysis in apprehending corresponds to the double 
aspect of the reality apprehended. For the exact 
sciences, as well as the intuitive sciences, are in 
touch with an aspect of reality. Bergson treats 
of both these aspects, but as we noticed in 
Chapter III., unlike the metaphysical doctrines he 
criticises, which begin with the stable and per- 
manent, and endeavour to describe movement 
and change in terms of them, he begins with 
the reality of movement and seeks to see the 
place of the permanent in that movement. The 
first principle of his metaphysics, then, is an asser- 



INTELLIGENCE AND INTUITION 243 

tion that there are real movements. As the reality 
of movement or change implies time, and as time 
implies individuality, these real movements are indi- 
vidual. For, as we have seen, it is the discontinuity 
of our needs and purposes that makes us reduce 
movement to a series of states or points, and if we are 
to rise above such practical implications of thought 
we must recognise that our duration does not stand 
over against a timeless world, but is one among 
other durations, and see that we should understand 
other movements if we could apprehend them as 
we can apprehend the process of our own conscious- 
ness. There is not, then, one duration, but many 
durations. Yet while these durations are, because 
individual, discontinuous with the rest of reality and 
with each other, they are not entirely discontinuous 
or entirely separate. Individuals out of all relation 
to an environment are as impossible as a homogene- 
ous whole in which there is no individuality. While 
a real individual is a relatively closed system, no 
individual is clearly and sharply cut off from the 
rest of the world. We saw in the examination of 
biological methods that the facts seem equally in- 
consistent with the mechanical theory of life, with 
the view that evolution is the working out of a 
single plan in which the individuals did not count, 



244 THE PHILOSOPHY OF BERGSON 

and with the view that it was the result of the 
combined efforts of separate individuals. Rather 
they suggested that a species, for example, was in 
some sort an individual in itself. It is as hard to 
make absolute divisions between the various forms 
of life as between the different members of a species, 
and we must regard all life as in some sense one, as 
having some kind of common impulsion. But the 
nature and degree of this unity, whether in life in 
general or in space, cannot be settled in any a priori 
way, but only by empirical investigation. For 
individuality admits of degrees, and as there are 
different "rhythms of duration," so individual 
systems are more or less closed, more or less 
discontinuous with the rest of reality. 

The fact that individuality has degrees may serve 
as a key to the relations of the two aspects of reality 
with which the exact sciences and philosophy are 
severally concerned ; for we saw in the third 
chapter that the contrast between the two forms of 
intelligibility which correspond to science and philo- 
sophy is found within conscious experience itself, 
and the application of the exact sciences to life, 
limited though it is, shows that the distinction be- 
tween the spheres of intelligence and intuition is a 
distinction of degree. If we start with an exami- 



INTELLIGENCE AND INTUITION 245 

nation of conscious experience, we find that its 
movement and synthesis is only possible on a basis 
of permanence. Synthesis of memories into new 
thought is possible, because as past acts of thought 
and perception they have the fixity which belongs 
to the past. There could be no life if the acts of 
life did not form themselves into stable habits which 
are capable of repetition. To recognise identity 
only in our motor reactions is not to explain away 
its reality. But we are then setting it within con- 
scious life only. And if we are to view in the light 
of spirit reality without us, we cannot deny to it 
this one of the essential elements in spirit. 

In the process of " duration," then, we can dis- 
tinguish two aspects, the living synthesis of the act 
of thought, and over against it and making it pos- 
sible identities of habit and motor reaction. As our 
thought becomes less active, less a synthesis of all 
its past experience, it becomes more a series of asso- 
ciated ideas which, just because they are not synthe- 
sised with the rest of our experience, repeat them- 
selves. In so far as conscious life is such a series of 
associated ideas — that is, in so far as we are not really 
thinking — it is not free, and can be scientifically 
studied. Yet these ideas and memories are the 
basis of thinking, and each of our acts of thought 



246 THE PHILOSOPHY OF BERGSON 

becomes in its turn a memory, and the basis for 
further acts. The creative movement of life im- 
plies the same two aspects. Its creations have a 
basis of habit, and in their turn become habits. Its 
movement is a process of synthesis to new forms, 
but it is accompanied and made possible by another 
movement towards fixity and repetition and same- 
ness. The artist's fingers may be painting a picture 
which, because it is a creation, could not have been 
predicted, and was not contained in the past : but 
all the time they are dispensing energy which has 
been stored up in a special form in his muscles, and 
in his brain cells. This downward movement can 
be calculated just because it is a movement from 
mobility to fixity. It can be regarded as necessary, 
because there is no more of it in the end than in 
the beginning. Its limit is a homogeneous medium 
where qualitative differences have disappeared. 

If in reality without us there is real movement 
and change, we cannot predict or reduce to mechanical 
terms its growth or its production of novelty ; but 
we can calculate the other side of the movement, 
the reduction of its density, the dissipation of its 
energy, and the elimination of its qualitative differ- 
ences. Because the exact sciences are concerned 
with this aspect of reality, following the direction of 



INTELLIGENCE AND INTUITION 247 

the movement they study, they set up the idea of a 
universal mathematic where qualitative differences 
are eliminated, and construct a metaphysic from 
their ideal, forgetting that while it is possible to 
discriminate in a movement a series of points through 
which it passes, it is not possible from a series of 
points to construct a movement. 

Bergson, like Kant, asserts the validity of 
mathematics by the delimitation of its sphere. 
Kant, however, because he was concerned wholly 
with the mathematical sciences, held that what was 
outside of the sphere of mathematical application 
was outside of the sphere of knowledge. Hence 
what was shut out from the operation of the under- 
standing was given over to faith, but a faith divorced 
from any kind of knowledge could not hold its own. 
The importance of Bergson's limitation of the sphere 
of mathematical inquiry is that it makes room for 
another method of inquiry, which equally with 
mathematics is concerned with reality, which follows 
its real articulations and individuality, and which, 
taking up as it does the results of the exact sciences, 
enables us to solve those antinomies and contra- 
dictions engendered by a one-sided preoccupation 
with the mathematical sciences. 



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